Comelec to save millions from ballot paper

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) stands to save millions of pesos from ballot paper due to the shortened list of party-list groups that will participate in the 2013 polls.

Comelec commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the purging of party-list groups would also benefit voters because they no longer have to deal with a lengthy ballot paper next year.

“It’s really better if we can have shorter ballot papers. We cannot yet quantify but we’ll surely save millions of pesos. Voters will also go through a shorter list, and queuing will also be short. There are many pluses if we have shorter ballots,” Sarmiento said.

In the 2010 polls, the ballot was 26 inches long, primarily due to the 187 party-list organizations that joined the elections.

Sarmiento said the paper used for the ballots in the 2010 elections was imported from Canada.

“I’m sure the paper that will be used next year will also be imported, plus special ink will also be used, and there will be barcodes and security marks that would really cost millions. So we could really save a lot if we have shorter ballots,” he said.

So far, only 83 party-list groups have been declared qualified to run in the next elections.

The Comelec had disqualified 269 groups, including 60 organizations whose accreditation it cancelled for failing to get two percent of the total votes cast for party-list system in 2007 and 2010 polls.

Of this, 52 have managed to get status quo ante orders from the Supreme Court (SC), which means their disqualification is not yet official.

Sarmiento said should “30 or 40” of these party-lists manage to get a favorable ruling from the SC, the number of organizations to be printed on the ballots would still be significantly shorter compared to 2010.

He expressed hope that the SC would decide “with dispatch” on the petitions since the poll body is set to start printing the ballots by the second week of January.

On Jan. 4, the Comelec will be raffling off the list of qualified groups to determine their places on the ballots.

Sarmiento said they would include the 52 groups in the ballot, but the votes for them would not be counted in case the SC upholds their disqualification.