Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 2) — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has finished printing 67.4 million official ballots for the national elections this May.
The poll body said the last batch of the ballots was printed Saturday morning — ahead of schedule. Ballot printing started last Jan. 23 and was eyed for completion on April 25.
These will now go through the verification process.
Of the printed ballots, a total of 178,990 have been considered defective while 319,138 ballots were “quarantined,” according to Comelec Commissioner George Garcia.
“Quarantine means ito yung batch/sheet na may nakitang defective (Quarantine means this is the batch/sheet found to be defective), the other parts of the sheet will be inspected but those without problems will eventually be counted as good ballots,” he said.
Defective ballots will be shredded.
CNN Philippines Correspondent Melissa Lopez contributed to this report.
WATCH: The last few ballots for #NLE2022 being printed earlier this morning at the National Printing Office. After printing, these ballots will go through verification process.
Ballot printing started on January 23 and ends today, April 2.#VoteSAFEPilipinas #BumotoKa #2022NLE pic.twitter.com/zuaf8qieJv
— COMELEC (@COMELEC) April 2, 2022
