MANILA, Philippines --- The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will start printing the more than 52 million official ballots for the May 13 midterm polls on February 4.
''We are ready to start printing. The ballot papers are there already. The printers are already there at the National Printing Office (NPO) and are undergoing test runs right now so that there will be no more problems by next week,'' Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said.
''We expect this to run for a little over 50 days since the capacity of the printer is about one million (ballots) per day,'' he added.
Brillantes said the estimated 52,014,000 ballots to be used in the second automated polls in the country will be precinct-specific and will be printed on a 1:1 ratio corresponding to the number of registered voters.
Earlier, the NPO had awarded the P780-million contract to supply and print the official ballots for the 2013 mid-term elections to Holy Family Printing Corp. and its partner, Canon Marketing Philippines.
Asked what will happen to the party-lists considering that the Supreme Court (SC) has yet to rule on the disqualifications of several groups, the poll chief said they are already forced to begin printing sans the final rulings.
''We do not see any action on the part of the SC. And even if they did this week, it won't make it anymore... we are left with no choice but to push through with the printing,'' said Brillantes.
It can be recalled that the Comelec had earlier said that it will wait as long as it can on the final rulings of the SC on the disqualification of 52 party-list groups from running in the elections before pushing through with the printing of the ballots.
To recall, 39 previously registered party-list groups and 13 new applicants have managed to secure status quo ante orders (SQAOs) from the SC against the Comelec decisions.
This has resulted in the inclusion of the 39 groups with cancelled registration in the raffle, along with the 84 groups already accredited by the Comelec.
The 13 new applicants denied by the Comelec were required to secure mandatory injunctions, thus making them unqualified to join the raffle.
''We will now be printing 123 names of party-list groups in the ballots along with the numbers they picked in the raffle,'' said Brillantes.
Source:
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/comelec-set-print-52m-official-ballots-130946126.html