The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said the printing of ballots for the 2022 polls started earlier than 2019.
"We are happy that we started in the second half of January much earlier than in 2019 when the printing started sometime in February," Helen Aguila-Flores, Vice Chairperson of the Printing Committee, said Monday, Jan. 24, at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.
"We are hoping that with this early start or timely start we could have a buffer period for possible contingencies," she added.
Flores said ballot printing started Jan. 20 with the manual ballots for Local Absentee Voting (LAV).
After LAV, she said, manual ballots for overseas voting were printed next followed by the automated election system ballot for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
"Our target is to finish the printing of all official ballots on April 21," said Flores.
The Comelec is set to print more than 67 million ballots for the May 2022 elections.