00:00The Commission on Elections on Wednesday cleared out all allegations targeting candidates
00:05which guarantees their victory in the 2025 midterm elections through ballots that have
00:11already been secretly shaded. PTV's Luisa Irispe tells us more.
00:18The Commission on Elections clarified all allegations of supposed tricks and deceptions
00:23in the upcoming elections, most especially the newest scheme being offered by a certain group
00:28to some candidates in exchange for a sure win this elections, the alleged invisible shades
00:34or pre-shaded ballots. According to COMELEC Chairman George Erwin Garcia, this is definitely
00:40not true and impossible because each ballot goes through a thorough machine and manual verification.
00:58In the verification process at the Amorado Sports Complex in Quezon City, COMELEC showed the public
01:10that with even a scratch in the ballots, smudge or unnecessary marks, the ballot will be declared
01:15defective and should be reprinted. And when going through a machine verification, the secret markings
01:21for security embedded by the National Printing Office and the COMELEC at the ballots should be
01:26readable or else it will also be rejected by the machines. This thorough process simply indicates
01:32an invisible shade is impossible during the printing. And for those saying that the machines
01:37already contains votes before the voting even starts on May 12, the poll body assured that
01:43the flash drives of the machines will be re-zeroed during the final testing and sealing.
01:56Meanwhile, the COMELEC is fast-tracking the process of verifying each ballot. The COMELEC hired more than 200 job order individuals as an additional manpower for the verification process.
02:17This will allow the commission to increase the verification from 600,000 to 1 million ballots a day.
02:22As of now, COMELEC has verified around 3 to 4 million ballots from the 27 million printed by the commission.
02:29The number of rejected ballots is not that much. And the limited number of rejected ballots we have seen are machine-rejected ballots.
02:36None of them can be seen in the manual verification. Even if there is a smudge, a black line, if you look at it, it is not visible.
02:48COMELEC assured that even though Senatorial candidate Willie Ong announced his withdrawal,
02:53this will not affect the printing process. COMELEC will only consider the acquired votes
02:58of Ong as trade votes. As of now, COMELEC has yet to receive the withdrawal statement of Ong.
03:03But if he sent this via a representative, COMELEC will be willing to accept it due to his medical condition.
03:09From People's Television Network, Louisa Erispe for Balitang Pambansa.
