18 million ballots for OAV, ARMM have been printed

• Source:http://www.mb.com.ph/18-million-ballots-for-oav-armm-have-been-printed/
• Monday, March 7, 2016

By Leslie Ann Aquino

More than 18 million ballots for the May, 2016 polls have already been printed less than a month since printers started rolling at the National Printing Office in Quezon City.

Atty. Genevieve Guevarra, head of the Commission on Elections Printing Committee, said as of 11 a.m. Saturday (March 5), the number of ballots already printed is at 18,102,545.

“We are done printing the ballots for overseas absentee voting (OAV) and for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,” she said in a text message.

What are being printed now at the NPO, Guevarra said, are mostly the ballots for the other provinces in Mindanao.

The Comelec earlier explained that the ballots for OAV, ARMM and far-flung areas will be printed first as these will be shipped first.

The total number of ballots verified, on the other hand, is at 8,494, 989.

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista earlier revealed that due to the fast printing, the ballot verification process is lagging behind.

During the verification process, each ballot is being fed into the vote counting machine to see if it will not be rejected.

“I told you before that the printing was going to be quicker because of the shorter ballot…but because of this, the verification process has a difficult time to catch up,” said Bautista.

The poll body is printing 56.7 million ballots for the May, 2016 polls, which include those that will be used for local and overseas absentee voting, and the training ballots for the final testing and sealing, and Preliminary Logic and Accuracy Test.

This does not include the ballots that will be used for manual elections for local and overseas absentee voting totaling to 223,611. The printing of these were already completed last February 12.

Printing of the official ballot was postponed thrice before it finally started last February 18.