Unused BSKE ballots destroyed

MANILA, Philippines — Around four million unused and defective ballots from the recent barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections will be destroyed, according to the Commission on Elections.

Comelec deputy executive director for administration Helen Flores said the destruction of these ballots started yesterday.

At least 1,371,179 of the ballots are considered defective due to printing error.

The rest were not used because of the conversion of municipalities into cities.

The cityhood of Baliuag in Bulacan and Carmona in Cavite were ratified in plebiscites held on Oct.30.

Residents of Maguindanao voted to split the province into Maguindao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur during a plebiscite held in September.

Also to be destroyed are unused ballots after the Supreme Court ruled that some areas in Makati are part of Taguig.

Excess ballots due to repeated increases and decreases in allocation are also set for destruction.

There are 84,905 defective accountable forms, which were not used due to printing errors, according to the Comelec.

“This is customary because we want to make sure the rejected ballots will not be used for illegal purposes,” Flores said.

She said it would take three weeks to one month to manually tear the unused ballots.

Flores said manually torn ballots would be turned over to the Comelec disposal committee for machine shredding.

She expressed concern that rejected ballots may be used by those who have pending electoral protests.

“Those are always possible scenarios. We would not want that to happen,” Flores said.

The four million unused and defective ballots are still considered within the normal number, she said.