MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Wednesday, April 20, started delivering the ballots that will be used for the 2022 elections to city and municipal treasurers’ offices across the Philippines.

Ahead of the dispatch, the Comelec conducted a press conference on Tuesday night, April 19, at its warehouse in Pasig, where the ballots were stored.

There, some Comelec officials, watchdogs, and representatives of the Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines witnessed the sealing of trucks that contained the ballots.

“We hope to finish the deployment [by] May 5 except if there are delays that we won’t be able to predict,” said Comelec Commissioner Aimee Ferolino, who heads the poll body’s packing and shipping committee.

The Comelec finished printing 67.4 million ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City on April 2. The poll body was ahead of its target completion date of April 25.

Of this number, around 1.7 million ballots were already deployed abroad for the month-long overseas voting that kicked off on April 10.

Aside from ballots, the Comelec had already delivered ballot boxes to provincial warehouses in February and had begun transporting vote-counting machines (VCMs) to similar destinations in early April.

The general elections in the Philippines will take place on May 9, and will determine a new set of leaders for over 18,000 national and local posts, including President Rodrigo Duterte’s successor. – Rappler.com