Physical election returns (ERs) received by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) reached close to 80,000 on Wednesday, May 18.
As of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, physical poll returns received by the poll watchdog reached 79,266. This translates to 73.54 percent of the 107,785 poll returns from clustered precincts around the country.
The Catholic church-based poll watchdog disclosed that of the 78,220 up for processing as of 5 p.m. of May 17, it has encoded a total of 60,145 physical election returns. Of this, 59,472 matched the electronically transmitted returns, which yielded a 98.88 percent match rate.
The difference between these figures are accounted for ERs that are not yet compared with the digital results, ERs that have no corresponding electronically-transmitted copies, and ERs that are up for revalidation.
The match rate is quite high "due to the volume of the ERs that have already been encoded," PPCRV Legal Director Vann Dela Cruz said.
It was disclosed that physical poll returns up for revalidation are at 327.
Fourteen ERs are not yet compared with the digital copy while 332 have no corresponding digital copy.
Meanwhile, the bulk of physical election returns coming in are from Luzon provinces, with 45,892.
The second largest number of poll returns came from Visayas, with 16,033. The National Capital Region has so far sent 10,046 while Mindanao has sent 7,295.
The PPCRV has yet to receive election returns from abroad but Dela Cruz said ERs from overseas precincts are now being prepared and are expected to arrive in the country tomorrow, May 19.
"We actually already received communication from the office of overseas voting of the Comelec, they're just preparing our copy of the election returns. Hopefully, we could pick them up by tomorrow," Dela Cruz said.