Printing of ballots to start next week—Comelec

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday said the National Printing Office (NPO) will start printing more than 52 million official ballots for the May 13 automated midterm elections next week.

In an interview with reporters, Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. announced that the NPO was already conducting test runs in time for the official start of the ballot printing on Feb. 4.

Some 52,014,000 ballots need to be printed. These precinct-specific ballots will be on a 1:1 ratio (voter per official ballot), Brillantes pointed out.

“We are ready to start printing. The ballot papers are there [at the NPO] already. The printers are also there and are undergoing test runs right now so that there will be no more problems by next week,” he said.

The printing is expected to run over 50 days since the printer can only churn out about a million ballots a day, he added. Jocelyn R. Uy