PPCRV: We do not recount, we compare physical with electronically-transmitted ERs

An official of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), on Thursday, May 12, reiterated that the church-based poll watchdog’s task is to compare physical election returns to the electronically-transmitted ones and not recount the tally of votes for the May 2022 polls.

“Yung iba ang iniisip ay nagre-recount daw tayo. Wala po sa batas ‘yun at hindi po ‘yun ang ginagawa namin. Pwedeng gawin kung gugustuhing gawin pero hindi po ‘yun ang aming mandato at hindi rin ‘yun ang nasa batas. Hindi tayo nagre-recount kundi nagkukumpara (Others are thinking that we are recounting. That is not in the law and it is not what we are doing. It can be done, but that is not our mandate and that is not what is in the law. We do not recount but compare),” said PPCRV spokesperson Atty. Vann Dela Cruz in a press briefing on Thursday, May 12.

As mandated by the law, the church-based poll watchdog receives the fourth copy of the pre-transmitted ERs. Dela Cruz explained that these “pre-transmission physical ERS” will be compared to the electronically-transmitted ones.

In relation to this, a total of 24,640 ERs have so far arrived at PPCRV’s command center in the University of Santo Tomas as of 11:20 a.m on Thursday. Of these ERS, only 16,820 have been fully-encoded.

“These fully-encoded ERs have been matched or validated with the electronic transmission and the first batch of validation yields 100% match,” said Dela Cruz.

Furthermore, the expert debunked the circulating claims that there had been chaos at PPCRV’s command center.

“Maayos naman ang ating kalagayan dito ay wala naman tayong nakikitang kaguluhan. Kalma lang tayo dito sa PPCRV. Patuloy po ang aming ginagawa dito at patuloy po ang aming pagtanggap ng election results, patuloy ang aming pag-vavalidate, at patuloy ang aming pagma-match (We are in a good situation here and we do not see any disturbance. We are calm here at PPCRV. We continue to do this and we continue to receive ERs, we continue to validate, and we continue to match ,” added Dela Cruz.