Comelec mulls live video stream of ballot printing

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday said that it is thinking of putting up a live video coverage of the printing of the ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO), just like what it did during the 2008 elections for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). In an interview, Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said that they are still working on the details of how they can provide a live video feed of the ballot printing to a certain website for public viewing. "We're working on the details to make a livestreaming... that's one the things we're working on," he told reporters. If it pushes through, the source of their video for the feed will be the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at the NPO in Quezon City. As of Tuesday, he said that there are already 16 cameras at the printing facility, with 10 more to be installed. "In the following days we'll install more CCTVs. It never hurts to be more secured," he said. But he was quick to note that broadcasting on the web is a "bit more complicated," so they are still ironing out the details. In 2008, CCTV cameras were also installed at the ballot printing facility so that interested parties can observe the conduct of the preparations of election paraphernalia for the ARMM elections. Earlier, Larrazabal said that it will take the printers about 60 to 70 days to print all the official ballots for the May polls, with each printer having the capacity to print 200,000 ballots. The commissioner said the ballots will be printed on 160 GSM paper stock imported from Canada. The poll body said that it will only print ballots based on the number of voters who registered from December to October 31. As of January 15, there are already a total number of 50,723,734 registered voters, 37,422 voting centers, and 76,340 clustered precincts. —Kimberly Jane Tan, GMANews.TV