“WE WILL have all 50,723,734 ballots on election day as scheduled.”
This was the assurance given by Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, as he reported more than half of the official ballots have been printed.
As of Monday morning, the National Printing Office (NPO) has printed 26,178,510 out of the more than 50 million ballots to be used for the automated elections this May.
“In 24 hours, we printed about 860,000 ballots so that's a good number. The total ballots now as of this morning is 26,178,510. We've obviously crossed the 50 percent mark already,” Larrazabal said.
The NPO is now using five printers with the fifth arriving last Saturday to maximize production and beat the April 25 deadline.
“There are now five printers running at the NPO. The fifth printer arrived early last week and it was operational since last Saturday. It hasn't yet hit its maximum production level because it’s still ramping up the production," said the Comelec official.
Comelec and NPO aims to ramp up production of the ballots in the next few days with the fifth printer running at maximum level.
The production of ballots, including verification, packing and all the other necessary steps, are set to be discussed with the printing office this week.
“Because we have a fifth printer already… we continue to look at the production line to determine how we can speed it up further," said Larrazabal.
The NPO might stop or slow down production on Good Friday but will immediately resume ballot printing on Holy Saturday.
BEI training
Meanwhile, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez also reported that the poll body has trained half of the required board of election inspectors (BEIs) who will serve on election day.
“Ongoing yung BEI training and I believe so far we have trained more than 50 percent of our personal requirement...we will finish it before the elections," said Jimenez.
He added that the “intensive training” the BEIs go through will help in the conduct of a successful elections.
“When you pass the testing, we have a very high degree of confidence that you will be able to perform on election day," Jimenez told reporters.
The deadline of BEI training was previously set on March 31.
Teacher groups have earlier aired that teachers should be trained about the implementation of the first-ever automated elections ahead of time.
But Comelec said they opted to conduct the BEI training in March to help the teachers remember the training.
OAV voting
In Hong Kong and Singapore, where the automated system will also be introduced to voters, only three special BEIs failed the practical exam.
Twenty out of 60 SBEIs need to pass the test but Comelec reported that 57 SBEIs passed.
Larrazabal, who visited Hong Kong last week, said they commend the efforts of the Filipino voters residing in the neighboring country.
“They even have their own voters' education going on. They printed around 50,000 ballots. We brought about 10,000 flyers with us last week. They will also print posters and streamers,” said Larrazabal.
Commissioner Armando Velasco who is in charge of the overseas absentee voting also assured that the poll body is ready to hold the automated polls starting April 10, one month ahead of the election day here in the country.
“We have conducted the training on the overseas absentee voting...we already finished the conduct of training and were ready to conduct the automated elections in Hong Kong and Singapore starting April 10," said Velasco.
More than 500,000 overseas voters all around the world are set to participate in the coming polls. (Kathrina Alvarez/Sunnex)