Comelec completes printing of 92 million BSKE ballots

MANILA, Philippines — More than 90 million official ballots to be used in the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections have been printed, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.

“For our initial voter’s list, almost 92 million, 100 percent of the ballots have already been printed,” Comelec spokesman Rex Laudiangco said at the Laging Handa public briefing.

The number includes a total of 66,973,949 barangay ballots and 23,639,477 SK ballots that will be used in the Oct. 30 polls.

“We will just need to print those for new voters numbering about 1.6 million. These are those that applied from Dec. 12 to Jan. 31, 2023,” Laudiangco said.

On Oct. 10, 2022, Marcos signed Republic Act 11935, which moved the Dec. 5, 2022 barangay and SK elections to the last Monday of October this year.

The barangay and SK polls have been repeatedly postponed since 2016.?The October 2016 barangay and SK polls were postponed to October 2017.

From there, it was postponed to May 2018 and was again reset to December 2022.

Earlier, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said the poll body is looking at allowing early voting for senior citizens, people with disabilities, pregnant women and indigenous people on election day.

In his proposal, certain precincts will serve such sectors from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m.

Meanwhile, Laudiangco said Comelec is consulting with the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Finance and the Commission on Audit on the early distribution of honorarium of public school teachers who will serve as poll workers.

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte made the appeal for teachers during the National Election Summit last week.