Manila, March 11 -- The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is close to completing the printing of the official ballots for the May 12 midterm elections.

Comelec Chairperson George Garcia said some 61 million official ballots have already been printed at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.

"We are now at around 92 percent complete with the ballot printing," he said in an interview Tuesday.

Garcia also reported that there is still much work needed, particularly on the verification of the ballots as only 36 million have passed the process.

"We must be able to improve our verification process. On the average, we must be able to verify around 1.2 million ballots on a single day," he added.

During verification, the official b...