MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) postponed anew the reprinting of the official ballots for the May 12 elections following recent temporary restraining orders (TROs) issued by the Supreme Court (SC).
According to Comelec chairperson George Garcia, instead of January 22, Wednesday, they are considering moving the start of the reprinting activities to Saturday, January 25.
Garcia added that the poll body will render overtime work from Wednesday to Friday to adjust the database and include the names of the two aspirants favored by the TROs.
“Our staff will work overtime, overnight again, to change the database, carry out a new serialization of each ballot and also change 1,697 ballot faces for the whole country,” Garcia said. “That’s what we’re going to do so that we can start printing ballots on Saturday.”
The high court on Tuesday issued TROs favoring senatorial aspirant Francis Leo Marcos and dismissed Albay governor Noel Rosal after they were disqualified by Comelec earlier.
Printing of the 73 million ballots for midterm national and local elections started January 6, but the Comelec suspended it last week after the SC issued TROs against the disqualification of several local aspirants.
The Comelec said this resulted in the waste of six million printed ballots with a printing cost of around P132 million./PN
