THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced on Saturday that it had printed over 68 million official ballots for the May 12 national and local elections.
Comelec Chairperson George Garcia stated that 68,542,564 ballots have been printed since January 27 at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.
Despite initial setbacks, Garcia expressed gratitude to the NPO and its leadership for meeting the March 15 deadline.
The printed ballots exclude test ballots and those for the Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections, which have been postponed to October. The final batches printed were for Iloilo province and San Juan City.
Comelec suspended printing and discarded six million ballots due to Supreme Court-issued temporary restraining orders (TROs) concerning candidate disqualifications.
Ballot deployment is set to begin in mid-April, with 34 million ballots already verified through manual and automated checks.
