The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) confirmed on Saturday that it has started destroying more than 2.4 million ballots originally printed for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) parliamentary elections, which were initially scheduled for October 13, 2025.
The disposal comes after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Republic Act No. 12317 in March 2025, which rescheduled the historic BARMM elections to the second Monday of September 2025.
The new law also extended the region’s transition period, allowing the Bangsamoro Transition Authority to retain governance unless members are replaced or elected to other offices.
In a social media statement, the poll body explained that the 2,420,904 ballots are being decommissioned to
“ensure that they could not be used in any way and to maintain the integrity, security, and credibility of the election processes.”
The ballots, currently kept at the COMELEC warehouse in Biñan, Laguna, are being shredded in strict accordance with the commission’s official protocols and rules.
The upcoming regional elections will cover a massive territory, spanning the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, and Tawi-Tawi. The automated polls will also include 63 villages in North Cotabato that make up the Special Geographic Area, alongside 32 districts, three cities, 105 municipalities, and 2,185 barangays.
Data from April shows that the BARMM region has around 2.3 million registered voters. To accommodate them, the election infrastructure will feature 1,186 voting centers, 142,596 established precincts, and 4,883 clustered precincts.