Ballots for overseas voting to be printed first

The National Printing Office will print first the official ballots to be used in the midterm polls’ overseas absentee voting (OAV), which will be held beginning in April.

“We still have to ship those ballots to where they will be used, so we will print them first,” Commission on Elections spokesperson James Jimenez said.

The printing, which will start on Feb. 7, will be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The OAV ballots will contain only the names of national candidates, Jimenez said.

There are 1,789,823 registered overseas Filipino voters worldwide for the 2019 polls. —Tina G. Santos