The printing of 55.6 million official ballots finally started on Mon, Feb 15, at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.
With some candidates’ disqualification cases still unresolved by the Supreme Court, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) had no choice but to include them in the list.
Comelec chairman Andres Bautista was quoted saying, “We are confident that we can meet our deadline — that by April 25, we shall have finished printing all the ballots we need for the May 9 polls.”
“The 55.6 million official ballots include those for local absentee voters such as the police, the military, teachers and the media, and 1.18 million ballots for overseas absentee voting,” reports Sheila Crisostomo in The Philippine Star.
Each ballot costs PHP20.
The report also disclosed that “three units of OCE Cannon Digital Printer are being used by the NPO, two of which had been leased from Holy Family Printing Corp.”
Another interesting tidbit: the 2016 ballots are “shorter” at 20 inches by 8.5 inches, compared to those used in the 2010 elections, which were 27 inches by 8.5 inches.
However, ballots to be used in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are longer because they contain Arabic translation.
The Comelec is expecting around 100,000 to 200,000 ballots to be printed daily in the first few days of printing.
Genevieve Guevarra, head of the Comelec Printing Committee, added though that they “expect up to 1.1 million ballots to be printed daily when printing machines hit their peak in the coming weeks.”
As the report indicted, “ballots intended for far-away places are shipped first, while the last ones to be delivered are those intended for Metro Manila voting centers.
