Comelec: 34.2 million ballots for 2025 polls printed, so far

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has so far printed over 37.8 million ballots for the 2025 midterm elections. 

Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said  34,235,042 ballots have been printed as of Tuesday, February 18. This accounts for nearly 50 percent or 47.48 percent of ballots needed for the May elections. 

A total of 1,673,806 ballots were printed on Monday.

The two HP printers produced 17,254,221 ballots out of the 36,849,878 printing target. These equipment were part of the signed deal with Miru Systems as the poll body’s automated election systems provider.

On the other hand, the four Canon printers from the National Printing Office (NPO) printed 16,980,821 out of 35,247,542 ballots already. 

 Garcia said last Thursday that the Comelec is still firm on its April 14 deadline for the printing of ballots.

He, however, added that Comelec  is targeting to finish the printing by the second week of March to give way for the verification of ballots.

During the verification of ballots, which is done at the NPO and at the Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City, ballots are manually fed into the automated counting machines to check for printing irregularities such as ink smudges or torn pages.

The machines will then verify the secret markings and time markings of the ballots.

Garcia said last January 27 that the Comelec “partially terminated” its contract with Miru System, which was supposed to print the whole ballots.

He explained that the move was necessary to make sure that the ballot printing would be completed on or before the April 14 deadline.