Printing of ballots doable in 35 days

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is looking to complete the printing of over 77 million official ballots for the October 23 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections in 35 days.

Comelec Printing Committee head Genevieve Guevara said they want to complete the printing of 77,261,086 ballots at the soonest time possible.

“We are looking to finish ahead of our timeline and complete printing in 35 days,” she said at the press conference on the ballot printing kick-off event at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City on Wednesday.

Based on the projected timeline, the Comelec will be printing 100,000 to 1.5 million ballots daily this month and by September 1, they are looking at reaching a two-million daily output until October 9.

They will be printing 56,468,566 ballots for the barangay polls and 20,792,520 for the youth elections. Each ballot costs P3, or a total budget of P231.6 million.

The ballots initially printed are for Batanes. It will be followed by provinces in Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas, and the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).

“We will start with far-flung areas first, except those in Mindanao given the scheduled public hearing for the postponement of the elections in Mindanao,” Guevara said.

Other election forms to be printed at the NPO are Election Returns, Statement of Votes by Precinct, and Certificates of Canvass and Proclamation.

In a caucus Monday, most congressmen supported a proposal to postpone again the barangay elections to May 2018 from the current schedule of October 2017.