Poll body adopts add’l security ballot features
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is adopting additional security features in the ballots to be used in the May 2019 mid-erm elections to ensure integrity and credibility.
“The ballots will have the normal security features that we normally have like marks, barcodes and there are few others,” Comelec spokesman James Jimenez disclosed in an interview over the weekend.
Some of the additional features, Jimenez said, are the ultraviolet (UV) markings on the ballots that are machine readable.
“UV marks can be read by machine and if not readable it will then be rejected,” Jimenez noted.
Jimenez declined to discuss the other features for security reasons.
The National Printing Office (NPO) started the printing of the ballots the other day.
“The order of printing starts from the farthest. The far-flung areas first and then last few deliveries will be the National Capital Region (NCR) because it the easiest to be delivered to their destinations,” he explained.
Jimenez said the printing of ballots will start with Mindanao provinces, followed by those to be used in the Visayas and the Luzon provinces.
The Comelec, he said, will be printing a total of 64,804,544 ballots. Of the number, a total of 1,818,710 will be delivered overseas while the rest will be delivered to various destinations nationwide.
Jimenez said the NPO is providing the Comelec three printers for printing of the ballots 24/7.
“Our target is to print one millions a day,” Jimenez said as he noted that printing of ballots is expected to be completed by April 25 or even earlier.
“In order to ensure that all ballots will be read by the VCMs on election day, the Comelec will conduct ballot verification, with 250 VCMs verifying 64 million ballots and the target for the ballots to be verified per day is also one million,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Comelec created new Accessible Voting Centers (AVC) in South Cotabato and a new Special Polling Place (SPP) in Aurora in addition to those already existing for the coming elections.
As of December 2018, Comelec said, there are 33 AVCs - 5 in Region III (Bulacan), 18 in Region IV-B (7 in Occidental Mindoro, 8 in Oriental Mindoro, and 3 in Palawan), and 10 in Region XII (South Cotabato); and 33 SPPs - 1 in Region III (Aurora) and 32 in Region IV-B (11 in Occidental Mindoro and 21 in Oriental Mindoro) are currently existing as Indigenous Peoples (IP) Established Precincts.
The Comelec said some Separate Polling Places (SPP) established as Indigenous Peoples (IP) will have their own Vote Counting machine (VCM) for the 2019 National and Local Elections (NLE)!
Clustered IP Established Precincts per voting center with at least 150 IP voters will have exclusive use of a VCM for their respective precincts.
“IP’s and IP communities all over the country can now have their own precincts in their respective voting centers (SPP) or a precinct in a voting center that is near their community (ACV) not just for the upcoming 13 May 2019 National and Local Elections (NLE) but for all,” Comelec said. —