Ballot printing for overseas voting may be completed by Feb. 14 — Comelec

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) targets to finish the printing of ballots for overseas voters in the upcoming elections by Thursday (Feb. 14), one of its officials said on Wednesday.

“Sa ngayon we’re [printing] about 700,000 per day […] We hope to hit peak production soon, mga around one million ballots per day,” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

“So ang expectation natin is we will finish overseas ballots by Wednesday or Thursday,” he added.

Jimenez earlier said that the Comelec may print at least 61 million ballots to assist the high number of voters in the country and overseas.

“We expect that we will be printing somewhere around 61 million ballots and probably more because we also have to account them for the ballots for overseas voting. We are looking at 1.7 million voters [overseas],” Jimenez said.

READ: Comelec eyeing 61 million ballots for 2019 polls

The printing of ballots for the midterm elections started last February 9, after experiencing some delays.

One of the causes of delay was the failure to release the official list of candidates for the May 2019 polls on time. /ee

READ: Comelec finally starts printing of ballots for May 13 polls