Printing of Local Absentee Voting ballots starts

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday, Jan. 20 announced the start of the printing of Local Absentee Voting (LAV) ballots.

"Printing of official Local Absentee Voting (LAV) ballots will begin tonight, at the National Printing Office," Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez said in a statement.

"About 60,000 ballots will be printed," he added.

Jimenez said since LAV ballots are manual ballots, there will be no preprinted candidate names.

After the LAV ballots, he said, the manual ballots for overseas voting will be printed followed by the ballots for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

On Wednesday, the poll official said the printing committee has moved the start of printing taking into consideration various technical factors.

The Comelec was originally eyeing to start the ballot printing at the NPO in Quezon City, Jan. 17.

The poll body is set to print more than 67 million ballots for the May 2022 elections. Of the said number, 1.6 million are for overseas voting and 65.7 million for local voting.