The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is showing 98.75 percent of the country's election returns (ERs) as of Tuesday morning, May 13, but only 79.9 percent of the total results can be verified by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

PPCRV, a parish-based movement that conducts a parallel counting of the election results, said it already reached out to Comelec to explain the gap that for them was a "significant discrepancy."

Verifying the results of the 20 percent of the ERs is crucial, especially for the national race, because it may affect the rankings of the bottom two of the top 12 in the Senate race.

"This makes the audit activities such as the Random Manual Audit (RMA) and Unofficial Parallel Count (UPC) much more important," PPCRV said in a statement.

The RMA dispels potential issues with overvoting or unintentional voting, while UPC compares physical election returns with transmitted returns, according to PPCRV.

"So even if the transmitted returns are late, they can be compared for accuracy," it added.

PPCRV's statement came after a stressful night at its command center on Monday, May 12, when it lost immediate access to Comelec's transparency server after the polls closed.

PPCRV was expecting to see election results by 7:30 p.m.—30 minutes after the voting ended—from Comelec's transparency server, but it was only at 9:30 p.m. that the PPCRV was able to display its own parallel count.

In a press conference, Ana de Villa-Singson, PPCRV spokesperson, said the hitch was "quite unusual" and a cause of "concerns" since this hasn't happened since 2010, when PPCRV did not have immediate access to Comelec's transparency server.

She said 34.38 percent of the total ERs were already transmitted to the Comelec, but PPCRV still did not have access to the data.

And when PPCRV finally had access to it, it still did not immediately display its parallel count due to another discrepancy.

"Last night, PPCRV encountered unexpected technical issues that delayed the release of our usual election data reports. The initial data we received past 8:15 pm came in different file formats, causing delays in the release of the figures," PPCRV said.

"Later, we noticed discrepancies between our internal count and publicly reported figures by other transparency server receiving parties. Out of an abundance of caution and our commitment to accuracy, we held off publishing the results while we verified the data," it added.