Santiago party’s name missing as Comelec starts printing ballots

Miriam Santiago YUJI VINCENT GONZALES/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

The printing of the ballots for the 2016 elections was temporarily stopped on Wednesday after it was noticed that presidential candidate Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago’s political party had not been included.

Genevieve Guevarra, the head of the poll body’s printing committee, explained to reporters that the missing name of Santiago’s political party—People’s Reform Party—was discovered after the NPO had already printed 39 pieces of the ballot.

Guevarra said they had to rush to the Comelec’s Sta Rosa Laguna warehouse to correct the error on the ballot face.

But she explained that the initial batch of printed ballots were not official ballots but the ones to be used in the final testing and sealing of the vote counting machines (VCMs), which is scheduled at least a week before the May 9 polls.

The NPO officially started the printing of the official ballots on Monday. As of Wednesday afternoon, the NPO was still waiting for the new corrected layout of the ballot.

“It has not arrived yet but we were told that it will arrive today, if not in the afternoon, later tonight,” Guevarra said.

While waiting for the final and corrected ballot face, the NPO printed instead the 750,000 ballots to be used for the demo of the VCMs.

“We have resumed printing but those being printed are demo ballots, while we are still waiting for the corrected ballot face,” said Guevarra.