Comelec: Ballot printing done by March, verification finished by April

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will finish the printing of ballots for the May 2025 polls by March and ballot verification by April, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said Thursday.

“Sa kasalukuyan, nakaka-27 million na tayo, more or less, na balota na naimprinta, and that is 36% of the number of ballots we need to print. So far, so good, and we even exceeded our daily target in printing the ballots,” Garcia said in a press conference at the sidelines of the ongoing ballot verification in Amoranto Stadium, Quezon City.

(At this time, we have printed 27 million ballots.)

“Ang ating pong pag-print ng balota, more or less, March, tapos [na] kami. Mga second week going to the third week of March. The most, March 19, tapos kami sa printing, basta magtuloy-tuloy ang performance ng anim na makina,” Garcia added.

(More or less, we will be done with ballot printing by March. The latest date would be March 19, as long as the performance of the six machines continue.)

Garcia said the ballot verification will take place in April and will have two stages: manual verification of personnel via naked eye and machine verification.

The Comelec will have 600 personnel for manual verification while there are 200 machines so far for machine verification.

“Our rule is, if the ballot passes manual verification but does not pass machine verification, that is considered a rejected ballot. But if the ballot was not cleared to go after manual verification, that is already deemed as a rejected ballot. No need for machine verification [at that point],” Garcia said.

“A manual ballot verification takes 7.5 to 8 seconds each, depending on the experience of the verifier. In a day, if you are going to verify from 7 am to 7 pm or 8 am to 5 pm, you will be able to verify a lot. But if you’ve noticed, rejected ballots are few and far in between, and most of them were machine-rejected ballots (those deemed ineligible for use after machine verification). So that is why we said we’ll be done by April 14, meaning we will be done with ballot printing and verification by then,” Garcia added.

The poll chief said such meticulous verification of ballots is necessary.

“We have such high standards for the ballots because first and foremost, it is an accountable form. It needs extreme care,” he said.

The Comelec is planning two work shifts in order to speed up the verification process.

“For today, we only have a day shift. But starting tomorrow, maybe we will be able to do night shift [also for ballot verification],” Garcia said.

After ballot verification, the ballots will be placed in vacuum sealed boxes to prevent them from being damaged due to temperature or the environment where these will be stored.

"We are doing this to prevent our past experience wherein certain ballots expanded due to temperature, and as a result, these were rejected by the counting machines," Garcia explained.

In Sandra Aguinaldo’s report on 24 Oras, the Comelec said with the tight security in Amoranto Stadium, it is practically impossible to manipulate the ballots.

The poll body said it has added 200 additional verifiers to speed up the manual process.

As of Thursday, 4 million of the 27 million printed ballots have been verified.

It also refuted the claims of a syndicate that it can manipulate machines in favor of a certain candidate by using invisible ink.

Meanwhile, Garcia urged the public to report those who claim to be able to manipulate ballots.

This includes another group that claimed they have a former Comelec employee as a member.
—with a report from Mariel Celine Serquiña/RF, GMA Integrated News

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