Ballot printing delayed anew

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has decided with a “heavy heart” to once again move the scheduled ballot printing from Feb. 1 to Feb. 8.

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said the decision is “not easy to do because if you move an activity, other activities may be impacted,” but that the full commission agreed on it after meeting yesterday. 

He claimed the poll body does not want to jeopardize preparations for the May 9 elections but had to move the schedule to a week later.

“This is really against my will. I don’t want to move the printing. Our initial target date was Jan. 25 but we moved it to Feb. 1 because we are still cleansing the lists of candidates.  But it is supposed to be our final final date.  But (after the) meeting, the en banc voted to move it to Feb. 8,” said commissioner Christian Robert Lim, who heads the steering committee for the upcoming polls. 

He appealed to the Supreme Court to close the oral arguments on the disqualification cases filed against Sen. Grace Poe as the Comelec needs to finalize the list of candidates by Feb. 3.

A final list, he stressed, still needs to be loaded into the Election Management System along with the Project of Precincts, which contains information on polling precincts, including names of voters and candidates, at about the same time the printing starts at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City using only three machines.

“We don’t have any contingency printers.  The peak output is one million ballots a day. We expect to reach the peak on second or third week of printing,” he added.

57-M ballots

The Comelec will need to print 57 million ballots – 54.3 million of which are for voters in the Philippines, 1.4 million for overseas absentee voters and one million for the final testing and sealing – by April 25 or about two weeks before the May 9 elections.

“We need 67 days to complete the printing process since the printers will have to start slow before they reach their maximum capacity,” Lim said.

This period, he added, excludes the time for repairs in case the machines break down as well as reprinting of rejected or quarantined ballots. At least 14 days is added for these eventualities, for a total printing period of 81 days.

“We are hoping this does not happen. It’s going to be a risk we are going to take in the preparations for elections,” Lim said, referring to possible delays.

Comelec also worries about ballot verification as the NPO can only accommodate 200 of the 325 vote counting machines (VCMs) needed for the process.

“We need to discuss with the NPO how we can place the additional 125 machines and the additional people. We wanted an integrated context that once the ballots are printed, the VCMs are also there. No need to go to the second floor because it compromises a lot of security,” Lim stressed.