NPO likely to meet deadline on printing of ballots

MANILA, Philippines - At the rate things are going, the National Printing Office (NPO) may be able to print all the official ballots for the May 13 polls ahead of the deadline set by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

NPO deputy director Raul Nagrampa said as of Friday, they have already printed more than 16.5 million ballots comprising 31 percent of the 52,017,360 official ballots.

He said less than 50 ballots have failed the compatibility tests with precinct count optical scan (PCOS) because they had ink either “too thick or too thin.”

Some 200,000 ballots, on the other hand, were set aside even before they were run through the PCOS machines for having defects like tear, crumple, mis-cut and misprint.

“Barring any problem, we will be able to finish printing two weeks ahead of the schedule given to us by the Comelec. We hope there won’t be a problem,” Nagrampa said.

The state-run NPO was directed by the Comelec to complete the printing by April 25, less than three weeks before election day. The printing started on Feb. 4.

Since last week the NPO had already started printing one million ballots daily using three high-end Canon Color Stream 3000 printers from Germany. Initially, each printer was producing 314 ballots per minute.

Each ballot contains five security features.  Two are in the form of ultraviolet ink while the three others involve “paper characters.”

In an earlier interview, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez gave assurance that no extra ballot would be printed to avoid problems. 

“That ratio will be one is to one, no extra ballot,” he said, adding each ballot measures eight by 27 inches, almost the same size as the ballots for the 2010 elections.