Comelec suspends ballot reprinting amid more TROs from Supreme Court

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will suspend the scheduled reprinting of the official ballots amid fresh Supreme Court rulings against the disqualifications of Francis Leo Marcos and Noel Rosal in the 2025 May midterm elections. 

Marcos filed his candidacy for a Senate run while Rosal filed to run for Albay governor, a post he held briefly in 2022.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued temporary restraining orders against their disqualifications.

“Yes,” Comelec chairperson George Erwin Garcia said when asked if the Comelec will not proceed with the printing process initially slated to resume on Wednesday, January 22.

Garcia earlier said the poll body would require two to three days to make adjustments to its database, conduct serialization on the official ballots, and produce 1,600 ballots faces should the SC release new TROs on the disqualification of aspirants vying for positions in the upcoming national and local elections (NLE)

“Kung sakali na meron, mga two to three days kaya na namin matapos ang lahat,” said Garcia. 

(If there will be new TROs, then we will need two to three days to finish the preparations for the printing.)

It can be recalled the Comelec started the printing of the 73 million ballots for this year’s polls on January 6 but was halted following the issuance of the High Court of a TRO against the disqualification of several local bets in the May 12 midterm polls. 

This resulted to the waste of six million printed ballots, with a printing cost of around P132 million. 

The poll body deputized the National Printing Office (NPO) to ensure the “proper, satisfactory, and timely” completion of the reprinting of the official ballots. This developed after the Comelec conducted a trusted build for the automated election system (AES) to establish an “add” feature that would allow the system to include additional names in the official ballots in view of the SC decisions. 

Last week, the Comelec began transporting the six million wasted ballots to a warehouse in Laguna's Sta. Rosa City for proper disposal last week. The body opted for paper melting after the National Archives of the Philippines prohibited the use of micro-shredding for recycling. — BM, GMA Integrated News

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