markjeee.com

MANILA, Philippines—The security of nearly two million ballots for voters in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) may have been compromised after they were printed without the security markings of the National Printing Office (NPO), the Inquirer has learned.

An NPO source confirmed that the ARMM-bound ballots for the May 10 general elections

had no NPO security features. The autonomous region consists of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz and Fr. Joe Dizon of Kontra Daya and sources from two groups the Inquirer interviewed said they had received reports from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the NPO that the ballots for the ARMM did not have the government-mandated markings of the NPO.

“The ARMM ballots have no markings,” said the NPO source, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his work.

The NPO employee said there was a plan to put NPO markings, but the machines encountered problems at the start of the printing for the ARMM batch.

For all their excuses, they can probably just say we can't print ballots properly because we run out of ink, or the paper keeps on jamming the feeder, or the driver is buggy, or our windows machine keeps on crashing, or our UPS only runs for 15 mins and there's a lot of brownouts. All kinds of reasons, nothing related to the electronic voting.

It's funny why when it comes to change or improvements in the process people always find ways to embarrass themselves. How hard can it be to have a reliable printer, printing the mandatory security markers for 50M ballots?