6 Enero, 2025 Lunes
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ABS 2025
Printing of ballots starts for 2025 polls
By J.Lo
“We want to make sure as much as possible at least 800,000 to 900,000 or one million at most ballots will be printed per day,” Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia told reporters printing of 73 million ballots for midterm elections and first parliamentary polls in Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) begins today.
Garcia said printing of ballots is estimated to take 77 days, from this afternoon until April 14.
According to him, Comelec has priority list of ballots to be printed, including those for around 11,000 overseas voters in countries not allowed to use internet voting, and for BARMM parliamentary elections.
He said Comelec had completed Election Management System (EMS) containing final list of all candidates participating in next year’s elections.
“It is not allowed to just change EMS… we can subtract candidate names, but we cannot just add more to it,” Garcia said, noting that Comelec had removed over 300 nuisance bets and those who were disqualified from national and local elections.
He stressed Comelec will proceed with printing of ballots despite pending appeals filed by some of disqualified candidates before Supreme Court (SC).
Garcia stressed that Comelec already afforded due process to those with pending disqualification cases and thus it should not stop Comelec from proceeding with their scheduled election activities unless ordered by High Court.
“We have to proceed with ballot printing because time is of essence…after completion of printing by April 14, we have less than a month to distribute election paraphernalia,” he said.
Poll chief already sent letter informing High Court is set to start printing of ballots. Garcia said Comelec will take appropriate action depending on orders of SC.
However, he admitted in the last elections, Comelec was unable to comply with SC order because printing of ballots was already ongoing.
More government employees can vote ahead of elections with Comelec now looking to expand coverage of local absentee voting (LAV).
“We want to expand so that more government employees can avail of local absentee voting, especially in health sector…they have to be able to vote early because they are deployed during election,” Garcia said.
Garcia also said other agencies of government may send letter to Comelec requesting for their employees who have duties during election to avail of LAV.
Eligible to avail of LAV are government officials and employees, including members of Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police, as well as members of media, media practitioners including their technical and support staff, media voters who are duly registered voters.
Garcia, however, stressed that those availing of LAV can only cast their vote for national positions such as senator and party-list.
Comelec previously announced it intends to automate conduct of LAV for the first time to expedite election process.
Garcia said ballots would be mass-fed to machines immediately following closing of LAV voting hours.
Comelec will be deploying vote counting machines in various sites where LAV will be conducted.
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