PPCRV calls for volunteers for manual election returns checking
FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Wednesday called for volunteers to help audit election returns (ERs) to ensure transparency in the transmitted midterm election results.
At a press conference, PPCRV spokesperson Ana Singson emphasized that vote counts are most vulnerable to manipulation during their transmission to servers; hence, manual checking is necessary to verify if the tallies on the transmitted results online and the physical ERs match.
READ: PPCRV gains access to 98% of votes transmitted — Singson
“When anything is being transmitted, that is when it’s most vulnerable. So the transmitted vote is most vulnerable to manipulation while it’s out there being transmitted to its destination,” Singson said.
“Now that we have more ERs coming in, we’d like to call for volunteers already because we’re being very careful about the number of volunteers we call until we have a good critical mass of ERs,” she added.
Singson also said the PPCRV Command Center, which currently has 185 volunteers, could expand its capacity to up to 240 volunteers.
The center is located on the second floor of the PLDT Sampaloc Office on España Boulevard corner Macaraig Street in Sampaloc, Manila.
As of posting time, the PPCRV Command Center has received a total of 11,860 ERs—12.71 percent of the total nationwide.
“This audit is very important because we will actually check the integrity of the transmitted vote,” Singson said.
“The printed ER is what’s being brought here; we scan that, and then we compare it to the transmitted ER of the same precinct,” she explained.
READ: PPCRV: We see 79.9% votes, Comelec sees 98% — what’s going on?
Singson also said that the recently concluded midterm polls had an almost identical voter turnout to the 2022 presidential elections. She said around 80.27 percent of voters participated in the midterm polls, which is close to the 83 percent turnout in the 2022 elections./mcm
