The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday said the poll body has started printing the more than 70 million ballots with 1,667 different faces for the May 2025 midterm elections.
Poll chairman George Garcia said each city or municipality will have a different ballot face because they have different candidates for local positions.
“We will do that next week and that will include the Bangsamoro. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) will have two ballots for each voter,” he said.
The Comelec is facing a huge task because there are more or less 2,000 cities and municipalities all over the country with different candidates and positions.
“The voter (in BARMM) will be receiving one ballot for the national and local elections and another ballot for the parliamentary elections,” he explained.
A ballot face refers to a single side of a sheet on which are printed some or all of the names of candidates to be elected by a voter.
The printing is expected to take about three months, with the estimated end date of April 14, 2025. This will include any necessary reprinting and quality assurance checks,” Garcia said.
Last October, Miru Systems turned over the two HP PageWide Advantage 2200 machines to the National Printing Office as part of the joint memorandum agreement.
Each machine costs more than P350 million. Each machine can print 540-feet per minute, with both printing 950,000 ballots in a single day, the poll official said.
