Comelec conducts random ballot checking for May 2022 polls

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday conducted a random manual checking of the official ballots for May 2022 polls.

The poll body allowed only several representatives from political parties and election stakeholders to check the quality of the printed ballots.

The Comelec, however, did not allow observers to take photographs and any form of recording device, and take down notes including serial numbers and ballot ID.

TIGNAN: Para maalis umano ang mga pagdududa, nagsagawa ng random ballot testing ang @COMELEC sa harap ng observers sa National Printing Office sa Quezon City. @dzbb

???? Office of Chairman Pangarungan pic.twitter.com/nbccA5bfLr

— Glen Juego (@glenjuego) March 24, 2022

Director Maria Lea Alarkon, head of the Ballot Verification Group (BVG), also discussed the process of verification after the official ballot was printed.

“As a run down and process of verification, we all know after the production of the ballots after printing, it will be passed on to another group which is the BVG and each and every ballot are verified,” Alarkon said during the random manual ballot checking.

Alarkon said the verification process also involved physical inspection of every ballot.

“In the physical inspection of the ballot we look for physical imperfections at the front and at the back of the official ballot,” she added.

Asked on what happens when physical imperfections were found on the printed ballots, Alarkon said “The verifier or the Comelec personnel sets it aside and we will count it later on so that there will be a reprinting of how many ballots that are considered imperfect.”

Meanwhile, at least 105,000 defective ballots were recorded. These are those smudges, wrong lines, colors, improper cut, or other printing errors.

The random manual checking of the ballots was held at the 3rd Floor National Printing Office (NPO) in Diliman, Quezon City.

Commissioner George Garcia earlier bared that there were no watchers present to observe the printing process of Eleksyon 2022 ballots to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections at the NPO.

Comelec chief Saidamen Pangarungan assured the public that there would be transparency as the poll body secures the sanctity of the ballots in the upcoming elections.

The Comelec said there were six units of machines that would print a total of 67,442,714 ballots for the upcoming polls, of which, 1,697,202 are for overseas voting while 65,745,512 are for local voting. — RSJ, GMA News