Comelec discards more than 930K ballots

MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Saturday began destroying defective official and roadshow ballots and other accountable forms at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.

Commissioner George Garcia headed the destruction of 933,311 ballots, including 586,988 official ones.

The roadshow ballots were used in testing the vote-counting machines.

The official ballots destroyed have smudges, wrong color, wrong size, and improperly cut, among other defects.

The ballots were fed to the industrial cutting machines and will be disposed of after the May 9 national and local elections (NLE).

The activity will be from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily until next week.

From January 22 to April 4, a total of 67,442,660 official ballots were printed.

Also present during the public event were acting spokesperson, lawyer John Rex Laudiangco, Comelec printing committee vice chair Helen Aguila-Flores, representatives of political parties and citizens’ groups, members of the media, and other stakeholders.

Flores said they are reprinting 283 ballots for Conner, Apayao after it was discovered that the ballots have holes in the middle due to supposed mishandling during delivery.

“We expect to finish printing this (Saturday) morning and we will deliver them tonight,” she said.