AFTER postponing it three times, the Commission on Elections has finally started printing of official ballots for the upcoming national and local polls.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista walked journalists through the National Printing Office in Quezon City to show samples of the more than 56 million official ballot that the government-owned printing house started printing Monday.
Bautista said the NPO will be producing 54,363,844 ballots for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao (except for the Autonomous Region on Muslim Mindanao), 1,189,350 for overseas absentee voting and 1,219,036 for pre-election logic and accuracy tests (PreLAT) and final testing and sealing (FTS) for 71 days.
Bautista compared the ballots being printed for the upcoming elections with the ones used in 2010 to show that the new ones will be five inches shorter than the 24-inch-long ballot used in the 2010 national and local polls.
The new ballots will measure 8.5×19 inches and 8.5×24 inches for the ARMM ballots with the ARMM ballot being five inches longer because of the Arabic text on the ballot.
The poll chief said the new ballots is more orderly and there are fewer candidates who are going to compete in this elections compared to the 2010 national polls.
“You can see in 2010 ballots [that] the font is small and tight. While right now, the ballots that we are going to use is a little more orderly,” Bautista said.
The front ballot face will bear the six names for each presidential and vice presidential candidates and 115 party-list candidates.
While the names of 59 senatorial candidates, local candidates, such as mayors and vice mayors and congressional representatives will be printed at the back of the ballot.
Bautista said the NPO should be able to finish printing the ballots by April 25 because of the new format with fewer candidates and shorter ballot measurement.
“This is the reason why we will be able to print all ballots by April 25, which is the original deadline,” Bautista said.
In 2010 there were 10 presidential candidates, eight for vice president, 187 for party-list and 61 for senator.
“So we can show those who fear that we will not be able to meet the deadline that we can complete the printing of ballots by April 25,” he said.
During the walk through, Comelec printing committee head Genevieve Velicaria-Guevarra presented the three presses – one owned by the NPO and the other two is rented by Smartmatic from owner Holy Family Printing – that will be used for printing the ballots.
The operation, she said, started at 7 a.m. and end by 8 p.m. for the first week of printing, but will escalate to two shifts starting on the second week with two shifts running from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. from Monday to Sunday.
“It’s a 24-hour and seven-day operation,” she said.
“We will be printing first the ballots for the overseas absentee voters, and then the next one are for far flung areas, particularly the ARMM, they are our first priority for the shipping of ballots,” Velicaria-Guevarra said.
She said that by the end of February, the ballots of OAV should be finished and they will proceed to the printing of the 24-inch ballots for the ARMM.
For the first week of the printing operation, Velicaria-Guevarra said that they will be able to print 100,000 to 200,000 ballots per day, but once they have already warmed up the machines, the NPO can produce more than one million ballots per day.
“We are confident that we can meet the April 25 deadline,” she said, adding that 180 Comelec employees are involved in the printing, including 400 for ballot verification, 25 to 40 for the packing and shipping and 60 to 100 are personnel from the NPO.
The Comelec originally set the printing of ballots last Jan. 26, but due to problems in the list of candidates and the software to be used, it was moved to Feb. 1 and then to Feb. 8.
