Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 28) — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has begun destroying over four million defective and unused official ballots and accountable forms printed for the recently concluded Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
Helen Aguila-Flores, Comelec deputy executive director for administration , said this is a customary process after the poll so that the ballots and other forms will not be used for illegal purposes.
Aguila-Flores said 1,483,052 official ballots to be destroyed are from areas that were converted from municipalities to cities and a province that was split into two.
Baliuag in Bulacan and Carmona in Cavite were converted into component cities following plebiscites before the Oct. 30 polls. The province of Maguindanao was also split into two, namely, Maguindao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur.
Comelec said 275,973 ballots of enlisted men’s barrio barangays were also reprinted, following the Supreme Court ruling them as part of Taguig instead of Makati.
The poll body will also destroy 1,371,179 official ballots deemed defective because of machine and printer error, as well as 860,440 excess ballots because of the repeated increase and decrease in allocation.
It will also destroy 84,905 defective accountable forms, which include election returns.
“These are normal percentages, these are normal quantities naman. Nangyayari po talaga sa printing process na may mga ganyan may mga reprints gaya nun unforeseen eventuality,” Aguila-Flores explained.
