COMELEC STARTS DESTRUCTION OF 6.7-M UNUSED BALLOTS

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday has started the destruction of some 6.7 million ballots that were not used in the May 12 national and local elections.

Unused ballots are those considered defective and rejected ballots.

Comelec Commissioner Rey Bulay, head of the Committee on Ballot Printing, told a press briefing before the start of the activity at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City that a total of 6,763,649 official ballots are set to be destroyed through melting in a facility in Pampanga until the second week of June.

The Comelec said they will also destroy 32,680 accountable forms.

Bulay said the first step would be, the personnel would manually tear the ballots and other election forms. The process will take 10 days until it travels to the facility in Pampanga, which is the last step for the destruction.

He said everything will be torn in Quezon City then  collected and taken to the facility in Pampanga.

According to Bulay, the whole process will be livestreamed.

He added that the number of unused ballots and other forms that will be destroyed this year is higher than in the 2022 elections.

The Comelec official said there only three million invalid ballots during the 2022 elections while the recent polls had 6.7 million.

Bulay explained the higher number of unused ballots were due to errors in printing and court-issued temporary restraining orders (TROs).