THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is set to restart on Jan. 22 the printing of official ballots for the May 12 midterm polls.
This as the Comelec admitted there is not enough time to recycle the six million ballots already printed by the state-owned National Printing Office in Quezon City for use in the forthcoming local and national polls.
Meanwhile, Comelec chairman George Garcia gave assurance that the elections will not be delayed due to a recent Supreme Court order disallowing the removal of the name of a senatorial aspirant from the ballots.
"Ballot printing is at the last part of this. There is a long process involved in ballot printing. Most probably, we can restart our production by (middle) of next week," Comelec spokesman John Rex Laudiangco said told reporters.
Laudiangco pointed out that they need to apply the necessary changes in the election management system (EMS), automated counting machines, and consolidation and canvassing system before they can restart printing.
The Comelec needs to conduct the new trusted build process with their international certification entity, Pro V&V, and generate the new ballot face templates and serialization.
"We have to complete all of these processes before we even reach ballot printing," he added.
The poll body on Tuesday called off the ballot printing following a Supreme Court order disallowing the exclusion of the names of certain candidates declared as nuisance from the official ballots.
The SC ruling brought the Comelec back to Square One in the printing of the ballots.
Laudiangco said new sheets of fresh ballot papers will be used because the poll body is pressed for time and must complete the printing by April 14 to 20.
He said the discarded election ballots will not be shredded because the old process of micro-shredding won’t work anymore.
“What we’ll do is melt all of the dispatched ballots using a solution for direct recycling,” Laudiangco added.
“Drying and curing process to recycle the unusable ballot papers will take time, and the poll body could no longer wait for it since its goal is to complete the printing of new ballots by Jan. 21,” he said.
Garcia stressed that the commission is determined to conduct the elections as scheduled.
As the May 12 elections neared, Garcia reiterated the commission’s commitment to ensuring a smooth electoral process despite the challenges.