THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday said the public can gain access this week to copies of the certificates of candidacy (COCs) of all political aspirants in the May 2025 national and local polls through the official website of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
In an interview, Comelec chairman George Garcia said the poll body will post all COCs in their website to allow voters to evaluate the political aspirants.
“By Wednesday or Thursday, you can now look at the website of the Comelec and you are going to see all the 44,000 COCs of all the candidates, national and local,” said Garcia.
He said the posting in the Comelec website is part of the Commission’s adherence to the policy of transparency.
“This is in the interest of transparency so that you will be able to find out who these candidates are. We are going to do that by next week,” said Garcia.
From October 1 to 8, there were a total of 43,033 COCs filed for national and local elective posts in next year’s elections.
According to Garcia, the final list of candidates in the May 2025 polls will be out before December 13.
“Most likely, before December 13, we will come out with the final list of candidates, both national and local,” said Garcia.
Garcia also said the Comelec is looking to commence with the ballot printing by December 13.
“For the next 2 months, from December up to February, we will be printing more or less 70 million ballots for the entire Philippines,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Comelec said that based on its latest data, there are now 68,571,499 registered voters nationwide for the May 2025 polls.
Calabarzon has the highest number of registered voters with 9,764,172; followed by Central Luzon with 7,712,535; and National Capital Region with 7,554,248.
“We are going to print the ballots one is to one… meaning, we are not going to overprint the ballots because this is an automated election,” said Garcia.
On Saturday, the Comelec’s automated election system (AES) service provider, Miru Systems, officially turned over two HP PageWide Advantage 2200 machines that shall be used for the printing of the official ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO).