MANILA, Philippines - All 50.9 million ballots for the Philippines' first nationwide automated elections on May 10 have been printed, a Smartmatic-TIM official said Friday.
Smartmatic spokesman Gene Gregorio said the printing of 50,850,940 million ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO) was completed before dawn Friday.
Poll commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal earlier said that the ballots will be shipped starting Saturday.
The ballots will be put in vacuum-sealed plastic packages and then shipped directly to municipal treasury offices.
In previous elections, ballots were delivered to the provincial treasurer's office, but since the ballots will be bundled based on the polling centers and precincts, they can be deilivered directly to municipal offices.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has urged voters to properly use the ballots on election day because they would be provided with only one copy.
There were cases during the mock elections where ballots were not accepted by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines because they were not properly marked or had been crumpled. -- Report from Ryan Chua, ABS-CBN News