The first batch of ballot boxes that will be used in the May 10 polls finally arrived.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal showed reporters the 5,000 ballot boxes that arrived in the country last Tuesday from Taiwan.

“We now have 5,000 ballot boxes that arrived, and we expect 5,600 ballot boxes more to arrive tomorrow (Friday),” he told reporters in an interview last Wednesday at the Foreign Service Mail Distribution Center of Philpost in Manila.

“We’ll have ballot boxes arriving every so often. We want to show the public that the first major shipment of ballot boxes has already cleared the Bureau of Customs and they will be ready for shipment for the coming elections,” said Larrazabal.

He said the Comelec expects the complete delivery of all the 77,000 ballot boxes by mid-April.

Larrazabal also explained why the number of ballot boxes is not the same as the 82,200 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

“You don’t need extra ballot boxes because you just need the extra machine to slide into the ballot boxes,” he said.

The ballot boxes will be stored at the PhilPost warehouse until they are shipped to the Comelec regional centers before Election Day on May 10.

Last month, the Comelec separately contracted Smartmatic to produce the black ballot boxes worth P243 million.