Councilor bets want faulty ballot templates corrected

POLITICIANS running for city council seats in Bacoor City on Wednesday asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to correct errors found in the official ballots to be used in the May 13 polls.

Candidates belonging to the Lakas–Christian Muslim Democrats filed an 11-page petition after they have found the errors in the ballot templates posted on the Comelec website.

The petitioners said the names of candidates running in the District 1 and District 2 in the city have been interchanged.

"We discovered that the ballot templates published on the Comelec website shows the wrong list of candidates for the position of councilor," the petitioners said.
 
The concerned Lakas-CMD bets urged the poll body to immediately make the necessary corrections to the templates before it is printed or, if printed already, make a re-print.
 
"This patent error on the official ballot template for these two districts is of serious nature as it will cause obvious confusion to the voters of each district," the petitioners said.
 
Petitioners Mike Bautista, Rowena Bautista-Mendiola, Venus de Castro, Reynaldo Fabian, Edwin Gawaran, and Boy Solis are running in the District 1 but their names appeared in the District 2 in the official ballots.

On the other hand, District 2 candidates for councilor but are listed in the ballots as District 1 bets are Bayani de Leon, Boy de Leon, King Gutierrez, Robert Javier, Gudeng Nolasco, and Rey Palabrica.
 
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said he is unaware if the official ballots for Bacoor City have already been printed or not.
 
He, however, assured that the problem should not worry the candidates as these is already being looked at, reviewed, and corrected by the poll body.
 
Jimenez also noted that all the ballots printed by the NPO are repeatedly checked if they are correct before they are forwarded to the Comelec.
 
"We reviewed the entire country nang malaman natin na may problemang ganun (when we learned about it). So we've been reviewing the entire country and the corrections have been made for the entire country. It's not as widespread as some people might say," said the official in a separate interview.
 
Jimenez said Comelec still has enough time to review all the ballots for the midterm polls. (HDT/Sunnex)