Poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Saturday said it recorded a 98.39% match rate between the second batch of the encoded physical copies of election returns (ERs) and the electronically-transmitted results from the Commission on Elections’ transparency server.
The high match rate means that Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte-Carpio are still leading in the partial manual audit of the PPCRV. This match rate only includes 28.5% of the total ERs or 30,727.
PPCRV explained that the 1.67% mismatch is not an issue of concern - 42 ERs have yet to be matched, while 203 ERs cannot be matched because the Comelec’s transparency server no longer transmitted its digital equivalent, and 240 will undergo verification.
As Comelec’s partner in monitoring the elections, the church-backed PPCRV gets the fourth pre-transmission physical copies of ERs.
These returns pass through a double-blind system, where two sets of encoders audit the same batch of ERs.
If the numbers of the first and second set of encoders do not match, these ERs in question will undergo verification.
“Bakit po meron 240 may kailangan irevalidate or i-process? Minsan po kasi yung election return pwedeng hindi mabasa or minsan nagkakamali ‘yung ating volunteers dahil pagod na… Meron pong ganung pagkakataon. Yung 2 nagiging 7. Pero nais ko lang i-emphasize na yung 240 ERs ay hindi niya apektado ‘yung lahat ng kandidato or hindi po nangangahulugan na yung buong botante dun sa (clustered precinct) na yun, yun ang binoto,” said PPCRV spokesperson Atty. Vann dela Cruz.
As of 10:30 a.m. Saturday, PPCRV has received almost half of the total ERs nationwide, or 52,066, mainly from Luzon.
PPCRV relies heavily on volunteers from various parishes, schools, and other civic sectors to manually validate election returns. In the first week, the poll watchdog accommodated more than four thousand volunteers, some walk-ins.
The poll watchdog expects to finish the manual audit by May 20. It is also scaling down its hours of operations to 12 per day from 24 hours due to logistics.
"iSyempre mahal pa rin naman mag-maintain ng ganitong klaseng kalaking venue. That’s why we are grateful sa sponsors and also the volunteers,” dela Cruz said.
PPCRV takes pride in the 99.995% accuracy rate recorded in 2019.
Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, election returns, Commission on Elections’ transparency server