74% of 67M ballots for May polls printed: Comelec

MANILA – Over 49 million or close to 74 percent of more than 67 million official ballots have already been printed at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) reported on Tuesday.

“Out of the 13 regions, including Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) and Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), we already printed 73.7 percent. Almost all are already 100 percent printed except for National Capital Region (NCR),” Commissioner Marlon Casquejo, head of the poll body’s printing committee, said during the press briefing before the walk-through of the printing of the ballots in Quezon City.

Casquejo, meanwhile, said they have printed 4,755,360 out of a total of 7,289,791 ballots for Central Luzon.

The poll body is set to print a total of 7,322,361 ballots for NCR.

He also reported that the manual ballots for local absentee voting (LAV) totaling 60,000 have already been completed.

The manual ballots for Office of Overseas Voting (OFOV) numbering 79,800 and the additional 145 OFOV manual ballots for the Philippine Embassy in Rabat in Morocco have been finished.

Meanwhile, a total of 86,280 ballots for the 63 barangays in North Cotabato which are part of the BARMM have also been printed.

The poll body started the printing of the official ballots in January.