The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is set to restart printing 73 million official ballots for the May 2025 national, local, and Bangsamoro parliamentary polls Monday at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.

In an interview, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said they have only 105 days to finish printing the ballots before the May 12 polls as they ''are running out of time.''

"We are determined to push through with the printing of the ballots at all cost. We cannot afford any more delays. The three weeks (of delay) is already a long time. We are running out of time," said Garcia.

"Monday is our self-imposed last deadline to restart ballot printing. We will have to print the ballots by Monday," he added.

On Saturday, Comelec said it successfully conducted mock elections for the May polls in 30 barangays in the country.

Garcia said Comelec was able to achieve 100 percent transmission from polling precincts to municipality canvassing centers, central server, poll watchdog servers, media servers, majority and minority party servers and back up servers,

On January 6, Comelec began printing ballots but eight days later, it was forced to suspend these after the Supreme Court (SC) issued several temporary restraining orders (TROs) against the poll body and its decisions to disqualify or declare as nuisance several aspirants.

The Comelec had several attempts to restart ballot printing, including January 20, 22, and 24 but were thwarted by succeeding temporary restraining orders from the SC.

The restart was prompted by the withdrawal of the senatorial bid of Francis Leo Marcos. DMS