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Mayen Jaymalin - The Philippine Star
April 21, 2025 | 12:00am
Commission on Elections (Comelec) personnel insert official ballots into machines for verification at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City on January 15, 2025.
STAR / Miguel De Guzman
MANILA, Philippines — The deployment of official ballots for the May 12 midterm elections will begin tomorrow, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
“The ballots will be directly deployed to the city or municipal treasurers’ offices,” Comelec Chairman George Garcia said.
He said the first to be deployed are the ballots for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Caraga region, Zamboanga Peninsula and Batanes.
The poll chief said the Comelec will kick off the deployment of ballots since the manual and machine verification process of ballots is already nearing completion.
As of yesterday, he said, about 95 percent of the total 68,542,564 official ballots had already undergone the required verification process.
Comelec hopes to complete the deployment of ballots by the end of the month.
“All ballots must be deployed before we begin the Final Testing and Sealing (FTS),” Garcia noted.
Based on the Comelec schedule, the mandatory FTS is set to be held from May 2 to 10.
After the FTS, the electoral boards shall close and seal the voting machines which will only be opened on election day.
Illegal campaigning
Four candidates are facing investigation for illegal campaigning during the Holy Week, the Comelec reported yesterday.
In a radio interview, Garcia said out of the four incidents of Holy Week campaign violations, one involved a party-list group while the three others involved national and local bets.
He added that the poll body is set to conduct an investigation into the reported campaign violations.
In the same interview, Garcia said the Comelec will also investigate reports of a vote buying incident in Quezon City involving a local candidate who was reported to have distributed ATM cards.
The Comelec has so far received around a hundred reports of vote buying involving candidates and party-list groups from various parts of the country, he said.
Campaign violations, including vote buying, are election offenses that could lead to permanent disqualification from holding public office aside from other penalties.
Garcia said the Comelec will not proclaim candidates facing election offense cases even if they win in the elections.
Even those who did not win in the election can still be slapped with an election offense case if found to have violated campaign regulations.
