Number of defective ballots rises to 224,000 — Comelec

Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The number of defective ballots increased further to 224,000, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) reported Wednesday.

Based on Comelec’s last report, the number of defective ballots is at 178,990. 

“It reaches to 224,087. So, ito po ‘yung mga (these are the) official ballots na found to be defective and needs to be reprinted,” Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said in a press briefing.

While the printing of the 67.4 million official ballots for the May 9 national and local elections is completed, Casquejo said the verification of ballots is still ongoing to ensure the quality of the ballots.

“The activity of the printing committee does not end at the printing of the last official ballots because there’s still another process which is the verification process. The verification process still [continues],” he shared.

“As of date, 83.93 percent has already been verified and 14.44 percent subject for verification,” continued Casquejo.

The commissioner assured the public that after the ballots are reverified, the defective ballots will be destroyed.

“We will be having a schedule after we concluded all the reverification and ballot exit, there will be a process of destruction or destroying of the defective printed ballots,” he said.

“We are expecting within this week tapos na ‘yung reverification or before Holy Week, or kapag medyo bumagal ‘yung reverification natin, we still have after Holy Week,” Casquejo said.

(We are expecting within this week, the reverification will be complete or before Holy Week, or if the reverification slows down, we still have after Holy Week.)

Based on Comelec’s latest data, there are 65.8 million registered voters for the upcoming elections.

JPV