Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 21) – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) ordered the National Printing Office (NPO) to temporarily stop reprinting revised ballots for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE) in October after the closed-circuit television (CCTV) servers recording the process lost power.
The NPO began reprinting over a million revised ballots on Monday morning. The Comelec said it will not resume printing unless it was broadcast live on Facebook and Youtube.
Printing will resume at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, COMELEC said. It added that if CCTV power was not restored, coverage and documentation teams would be deployed to livestream the process.
The commission said 1,317,483 revised ballots need to be printed for the barangay polls while 461,434 ballots are needed for the Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
Comelec said ballots would be reprinted for some municipalities that transitioned into cities and the creation of new provinces.
These areas include Baliwag in Bulacan, Carmona in Cavite, Maguindanao del Norte, and Maguindanao del Sur.
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The reprinted official ballots will go through verification.Comelec said old ballots no longer match polling places.The poll body said reprinting cost would not be excessive and reprinting is expected to be completed within three to four days.
