The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday commenced the destruction of 6,763,649 official ballots that were not used in the May 12 midterm elections. The activity is taking place at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City and will continue until the second week of June.
Comelec Commissioner Rey Bulay, who heads the Committee on Ballot Printing, shared details during a press briefing before the start of the process. Aside from the unused ballots, the Comelec will also destroy 32,680 accountable election forms.
“The first step is manually tearing the ballots and other election forms, which will take about 10 days before the shredded materials are transported to a facility in Pampanga for melting,” Bulay explained.
He described the procedure, saying the ballots will be torn “from top to bottom” in Quezon City before being collected and sent to the destruction site. The entire process will be livestreamed, documented, and archived by the Comelec.
Bulay noted that the volume of unused ballots this year is significantly higher than in the 2022 elections, which saw around 3 million invalid ballots. He attributed the increase primarily to printing errors and court-issued temporary restraining orders (TROs) that halted and delayed ballot printing.
“The Supreme Court’s TROs against the Comelec’s disqualification of certain candidates caused us to temporarily stop printing and later reprint some 6 million ballots,” Bulay said.
The destruction of unused ballots is a symbolic yet important step to ensure transparency and proper disposal of election materials.