The Commission on Elections has started the printing of more than 2.5 million ballots to be used in the Bangsamoro region for the May 9 synchronized national and local polls.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the poll body has also finished printing ballots for the manual local absentee voting (LAV) and overseas voting.
Some 67,442,714 official ballots would be printed for the upcoming elections, of which more than 1,697,202 would be for overseas voters.
The names of 10 presidential candidates, nine vice presidential aspirants, 64 senators, and 178 party-list groups will be included in the ballot, which will be printed back-to-back.
Elaiza David, director of the Comelec – Education and Information Department (EID), said there are three ballots with different sizes to be used in the upcoming polls.
The longest ballot, measuring 30 inches, will be used in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Ballots for non-BARMM areas, on the other hand, will measure 26 inches while the size of the ballots for overseas absentee voters will be 25 inches.
David said the front side of the ballot will have the national and local positions for both BARMM and non-BARMM voters while party-list candidates can be found at the back of the ballot.
Overseas ballots will only contain names for national positions such as president, vice president, senators, and party-list groups.
Earlier, Comelec printing committee vice chairperson Helen Aguila said the printing of the ballots is expected to be finished in April, including the buffer period.
“The buffer period is incorporated there because if we are to compute based on the peak performance of the printers of NPO, the accumulative capacity is 1,100,000 per day if it is working in peak performance. We are realistic in anticipating contingencies including the COVID surge and infection of our workers, so until April 21 that includes the buffer period. Our buffer period is about two weeks or three weeks,” she added.