PHOTO COURTESY OF COMELEC
MANILA, Philippines — A few days after the start of the printing process, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday released the final face of ballots to be used for the May 9 elections.
The ballots contained ten presidential and nine vice-presidential aspirants.
Vice presidential aspirant Wilson Amad and senatorial aspirant Norman Marquez, who both secured a restraining order from the Supreme Court after the Comelec declared them as nuisance candidates, were not included in the ballot.
The ballot also contained 64 senatorial hopefuls and 177 party-list groups.
Noticeably, the ballot skipped number 96, which is the number allotted for the Malasakit Movement Party-list.
The partylist, with former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) spokesperson Celine Pialago as a representative, was excluded from the ballot for its failure to meet the requirements of being a sectoral partylist sector that should represent underrepresented marginalized sectors, according to the poll body.
The party-list group has a pending appeal before the SC.
Over the weekend, the Comelec gave its go-signal for the National Printing Office to start the printing of automated election ballots to be used for the national and local elections.