Overseas voters’ ballots to be printed first

MANILA, Philippines — The printing of ballots for the midterm elections in May will start on Thursday after a slight delay, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has announced.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez also reported that the ballots to be used in the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) are to be printed ahead of the rest.

“Obviously, we will print first the ballots that will be used in the overseas elections since we still have to ship those to where they will be used,” Jimenez explained.

He noted that the ballots for the OAV need to be printed first because it will be conducted a month ahead of elections in the country.

Jimenez added that it is a long-standing practice of prioritizing ballots that are farthest from the National Printing Office in Quezon City.

“Those ballots will only contain national candidates. We are also going to be printing 24 hours a day, seven days a week so we can really finish them quickly,” Jimenez said.

The loading of data, Jimenez added, is ongoing while the printing of ballots is expected to be completed by mid-April

Based on Comelec data, there are 1,789,823 registered overseas Filipino voters worldwide for the May polls.

Out of 83 Philippines embassies, 41 are using vote counting machines including Agana, Calgary, Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Ottawa, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, Brunei, Canberra, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Macau, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Taipei, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Wellington, Athens, London, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Al-Khobar, Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

Filipinos abroad within the jurisdictions of the remaining 42 posts will use the manual system of voting in Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Santiago, Bangkok, Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Islamabad, Port Moresby, Yangon, Ankara, Berlin, Berne, Brussels, Budapest, Geneva, Lisbon, Moscow, Oslo, Paris, Prague, The Hague, Vienna, Warsaw, Abuja, Cairo, Pretoria, Dhaka, Dili, Jakarta, Manado, New Delhi, Phnom Penh, Shanghai, Vientiane, Xiamen, Vatican, Amman, Nairobi and Tehran.

The Comelec was unable to start the printing of ballots as earlier scheduled due to pending cases against candidates, which had to be resolved.