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Over 11 million ballots printed; daily output target exceeded

Mayen Jaymalin - The Philippine Star
Over 11 million ballots printed; daily output target exceeded
Commission on Elections (Comelec) personnel insert official ballots into machines for verification at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City on January 15, 2025.
STAR / Miguel De Guzman

MANILA, Philippines — Over 11 million official ballots for the May 2025 midterm elections have been printed, according to the Commission on Elections.

As of yesterday, the Comelec said 11,780,626 ballots or 16.34 percent of the required 72,107,420 ballots have been printed, leaving 60,326,794 yet to be printed.

Comelec Chairman George Garcia said on Monday that around 1.8 million official ballots are being printed daily, exceeding the poll body’s target.

“This exceeds our daily output target of 1.5 million,” Garcia said. “I do hope it reaches two million.”

The poll chief reported that as of Feb. 3, a total of 10,051,712 or 13.94 percent of the required 72,107,420 ballots have been printed.

While the printing of ballots has exceeded the daily target, Garcia said the machine verification – as well as manual verification of ballots undertaken by 800 Comelec personnel – is quite slow.

As an example, he said, of the eight million ballots printed, only about two to three million have undergone verification.

“That’s low. Verification needs to catch up,” Garcia said.

He said the Comelec is considering hiring an additional 300 people to speed up the verification process.

Based on the current trend, Garcia expressed optimism that Comelec would meet its target of finishing the printing and verification of official ballots by April 14.

Surveys

Meanwhile, Garcia clarified yesterday that Comelec has no intention of stopping the conduct of election surveys.

He said the poll body wants to regulate surveys to ensure their compliance with the Supreme Court ruling, while protecting voters as well as candidates.

“We encourage surveys, but they should be subject to the order laid down by the Supreme Court and guidelines of the Commission,” Garcia explained.

He expressed the belief that survey firms support the move being taken by the Commission, for it will remove those “fly by night” firms that sell their surveys to candidates.

COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS

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