PPCRV to finish BARMM election returns audit by Wednesday

MANILA, Philippines — The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Monday said it expects to complete its unofficial parallel count of physical election returns (ERs) from the first Bangsamoro parliamentary elections by Wednesday.

“We’ll finish everything by Wednesday,” Ana Singson, PPCRV spokesperson told Inquirer, adding that volunteers would work continuously to complete the audit.

READ: PPCRV begins audit of 1st BARMM parliamentary elections

PPCRV began manually auditing the physical ERs on Friday and has so far checked 1,186 of the 5,212 ERs from Maguindanao del Sur and parts of Lanao del Sur.

Singson said that Fr. Dave Procalia, the PPCRV’s head of operations in the region, will personally bring the ERs from three municipalities to the command center in Makati by Tuesday. 

“He said that he will get those today and he flies tomorrow so we will receive all the balance ERs here in the command center at 1:30 p.m. and then we’re ready to go and finish everything by, as in no tulugan (no sleep), we’ll finish it by Wednesday,” Singson said.

PPCRV conduct double scanning of the physical ERs to check the integrity of the transmitted votes from the automated counting machines per precinct. She noted that the PPCRV has been doing this since 2010, when the country shifted to automated elections. 

Singson said no significant discrepancies had been found so far. Initial differences in about 10 to 12 ERs were later traced to scanning issues and resolved through verification.

“At first, there were a few discrepancies, a few, 10, 12, but after further verification, it’s just a manner of scanning that was the issue,” she added. 

READ: LIST: Winning party, sectoral representatives in BARMM polls

She also shared that some ERs were unreadable, which she said will be raised to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). 

“If you look at the ER, half of it has ink while the right side did not. So even the QR code and the votes could not be read. We had some unreadable and that was a prevailing issue since 2025 and it has to be addressed,” she added. 

The Comelec finished the proclamation of all winning candidates for the elections last week. The 80-seat parliament provided 40 seats to political party representatives, 32 for district representatives, and eight for sectoral organization./dp