Comelec: Up to 4M defective ballots for reprinting

Metro Manila, Philippines - The Commission on Elections will reprint around three to four million ballots that failed the quality check, poll chairman George Garcia said.

Garcia explained that these ballots were deemed defective after a verification process. Some issues were incorrect cuts or improper ballot sizes, which could potentially affect the timing marks, as well as smudges and unnecessary markings.

“Pag pinasok sa makina ay tinatanggap naman ng makina. But we do not want to compromise on the quality of the ballots. Kaya kahit pwede naman hindi sana kami mag-reprint, we are actually ordering the reprint of these ballots,” Garcia said in a chance interview on Monday, March 24.

[Translation: When it's fed into the machine, the machine accepts it. But we do not want to compromise on the quality of the ballots. So, even though we technically don't have to reprint them, we are actually ordering the reprint of these ballots.]

Garcia was at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to deposit the source codes or human-readable software codes to be used in the automated elections.

Since 40% of the ballots have yet to be verified, Garcia anticipates more ballots to be declared defective but emphasized that the government would not bear the cost of the reprinting.

“Pagka po bad ballots ay walang bayad dahil nga sa syempre hindi naman kasalanan ng Comelec kung bakit nagkaroon ng depekto ‘yung balotang ‘yan,” Garcia said.

[Translation: The Comelec will not be charged for bad ballots because, of course, it is not the Comelec's fault that those ballots became defective.]

He reassured the public that the reprinting would not disrupt preparations for the May 12 midterm elections.

“Wala naman kaming problema dahil maaga kami nakatapos sa pag-pi-print ng balota, yung pag-reprint ng balota hindi rin naman ganoon problema sa amin,” he said.

[Translation: We don't have any problems because we finished printing the ballots early, and reprinting the ballots isn't really a problem for us either.]

The poll body completed the printing of all 68,542,564 ballots on March 15, two months before the elections.