The Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced that 6 million ballots printed for the May polls are now useless due to a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court (SC) against the disqualification of former Caloocan City representative Edgar Erice. The TRO prevents the Comelec from disqualifying Erice and four other candidates, forcing the poll body to scrap the already printed ballots. The Comelec is now back to zero in terms of printing ballots and will have to reprint them, including Erice's name.
The 6 million ballots printed for the May polls will now be useless following the Supreme Court ’s temporary restraining order against the disqualification of former Caloocan City representative Edgar Erice and others, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Wednesday. Comelec chairperson George Garcia told Unang Balita in an interview that the 6 million ballots we printed will all be useless because the name of the concerned candidate is not there.
And therefore, we are back to zero, he added. Each ballot costs P22, according to Garcia. This means the 6 million ballots cost around P132 million. The money spent is quite big already. If that's six million ballots, multiply it by P22 per ballot. Then, we have a lot of staff there who are paid with overtime because we have a night shift.The SC issued a TRO prohibiting the Comelec from disqualifying five aspirants including Erice who is aiming for a national position and four others who are aiming for local position. Garcia said the Comelec already started printing ballots for national candidates. In light of the TRO, the Comelec suspended the printing of ballots as the commission should include Erice on the list of candidates. On January 3, Erice asked the SC to issue a TRO or a writ of preliminary injunction to enjoin the Comelec from implementing its resolution on his disqualification. In November 2024, Comelec Second Division disqualified Erice for violation of Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code for supposedly spreading “false and alarming” information. This was affirmed by the poll body en banc in December 2024. The Comelec started printing the 73 million ballots to be used for the elections on January 6 this year. Meanwhile, Comelec said that the mock elections have been moved to January 25 due to the TRO from the Supreme Court. Our mock elections that were supposed to be scheduled for Saturday, we reset that and made it January 25 more or less. Hopefully, we have finished modifying the database election management system and serialization of the names of the candidates. Also, the changes in more than 1,000 ballot faces across the country. Aside from the ballots and mock elections, the Comelec made adjustments on the candidates’ database, election management system (EMS), the automated counting machine (ACM), and the consolidation and canvassing system (CCS).The poll body generated 1,667 ballot face templates reflecting the SC decision, created an inventory of all printed ballots, and conducted a study on whether the changes in the EMS warrant another trusted build. Further, the Comelec also cancelled the live test for the trusted build of the online voting and counting system (OVCS)
SUPREME COURT ELECTION COMMISSION BALLOTS DISQUALIFICATION EDGAR ERICE MAY ELECTIONS
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