Comelec ready to print 52 million ballots

MANILA, Philippines - Even without a final ruling from the Supreme Court on disqualified party-list groups, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is ready to print the 52 million ballots to be used in the coming May elections.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes announced that the poll body would start printing the 52,014 ballots on Feb. 4.

“We are ready to start printing. The ballot papers are there already. The printers are already there at the National Printing Office (NPO) and are undergoing test runs right now so that there will be no more problems by next week,” Brillantes said.

“We expect this to run for a little over 50 days since the capacity of the printer is about one million per day,” he said.

Brillantes said the precinct-specific ballots to be printed would be on a 1:1 ratio with the number of registered voters.

The NPO, earlier, awarded the P780-million contract to supply and print the official ballots for the 2013 midterm elections to Holy Family Printing Corp. and its partner, Canon Marketing Philippines.

According to Brillantes, the Comelec has no choice but to start the printing of ballots even in the absence of the SC ruling on several party-list groups previously disqualified by the poll body.

“We do not see any action on the part of the SC. And even if they did this week, it won’t make it anymore... we are left with no choice but to push through with the printing,” he said.