DESPITE the delays it encountered last month, the printing of the official ballots for the May 2025 national and local polls at the National Printing Office (NPO) is running ahead of schedule, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.
In a press briefing in Quezon City, Comelec chairman George Garcia said the NPO has completed the printing of some 27 million official ballots, or 37 percent of the 72,107,420 total ballots required.
“As far as ballot printing is concerned, we are so far so good. We have been exceeding our daily target of ballots to be printed,” said Garcia.
“By our estimates, we may be able to complete ballot printing around the 2nd week to 3rd week of March, the most by March 19 as long as the performance of the machines remain,” he added.
The Comelec was originally looking at completing ballot printing by April 14.
Garcia said the timetable they set for ballot printing includes the verification process for the official ballots.
He said some three to four million official ballots have undergone the verification process at the NPO.
He said they hope to hasten the verification process by opening the verification facility at the Amoranto Sports Complex in Quezon City.
“Ballot printing is fast but the verification is slow. Once we are able to improve the verification process, it is our hope that the verification will be able to cope up,” he also said.
Garcia said the Amoranto facility will house some 250 automated counting machines (ACMs) and an additional 500 verifiers for the machine and manual verification processes, respectively.
“If we are able to verify one million per day (at Amoranto) and another one million per day at the NPO, we will have two million per day for verification. That’s 20 million in 10 days. That’s a good output,” he said.
The Comelec restarted the printing of ballots last January 27 after being delayed by several temporary restraining orders (TROs) issued by the Supreme Court (SC).
