'Not a cause for concern:' PPCRV finds small mismatch in election returns

Poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is rechecking a small discrepancy between a fraction of physical election returns and electronically transmitted results, an official said Thursday.

But PPCRV media director Agnes Gervacio said the mismatch "doesn't have any impact" and is unlikely to "change the number of the results that we're seeing."

"We have found two ballots out of 8,000 (election returns) that we're rechecking again right now," Gervacio told reporters Thursday afternoon, adding that the finding will be reported to the Commission on Elections.

"This is versus the electronic, but I don't think that's a cause for concern at this point because we're checking all over again," she added.

The PPCRV conducts an unofficial parallel count of votes cast on Monday's midterm elections.

Volunteers encode physical election returns delivered to PPCRV headquarters in Manila from across the country; the encoded data is checked against results transmitted electronically from vote-counting machines to the transparency server.

Gervacio earlier said the PPCRV has not found any discrepancies in its ongoing validation of election results.

The media director also reported that the PPCRV is "going to surpass 20 percent" of received election returns, out of the total number of 85,769. — MDM, GMA News