The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has received the first election returns (ER) from Cubao, Quezon City, that will be used for auditing purposes, its spokesperson Ana Singson said in a briefing Monday night.
“Apparently, the rains are very strong outside, and the delivery of the couriers of all the ERs that we will need to be able to do our audit is being challenged because of the rain,” Singson said.
“We would like to credit our Archdiocese of Cubao, which was the very first to send ERs here,” she added.
Singson emphasized the need for auditing following the incident that the PPCRV was not able to immediately access the data from the transparency server assigned by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to the poll watchdog.
“Given the concern we aired a while ago, the need to audit is even more important,” she said. “We are grateful that we were awarded by Comelec one of the transparency servers, and we are grateful we have the capacity to bring the physical ERs here.”
During a press briefing around 8 p.m., PPCRV said it was unable to access the election results from the transparency server even after more than one-third of the ERs were already transmitted to Comelec.
It was only 10:21 p.m. The PPCRV flashed the unofficial parallel count on its screen at the command center in Manila.
The PPCRV spokesperson said the physical ERs that will be delivered to its command center will be compared to the transmitted votes in the PPCRV-assigned transparency server.
Singson said the ERs for the 2025 midterm elections now have QR (quick response) codes that allow them to audit not just the national positions, which the PPCRV used to audit before, but also local positions and party lists.
“We have the random manual audit to check the integrity of the count of the machine,” she said.
In a separate press briefing, Comelec Chair George Garcia said there were no irregularities in the reported delay of the election data transmission.
He said all the ERs can be counterchecked if the results the PPCRV received are the same as the Comelec and the ones received by the municipal board of canvassers. (PNA)