PPCRV eyes stopping quick count soon

The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is already considering stopping its quick count, its co-founder and chairperson said on Monday.

Ambassador Henrietta De Villa told reporters that the Constitution, the PPCRV is not allowed to tally 100 percent of the votes, since doing so is the role of the Congress as the National Board of Canvassers to process all the election returns (ERs).

PPCRV is one of the accredited citizen’s arms of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) this 2016 polls.

She disclosed that she would meet with Comelec Chairperson Andres Bautista within the week to discuss the matter since the canvassing has already started.

“Impossible talaga eh. I will ask the clear direction from Comelec when we should fold up or close the electronic results that we are getting. I will try to work out an appointment para maresolve na naming ito,” De Villa said.

She added that terminating the quick count would allow them to focus on the manual encoding of ERs.

“Kailangan matapos rin naming iyon at maverify so that we can compare it with the electronic results we receive,” the PPCRV chairperson said. 

De Villa said the PPCRV already received 43,335 of ERs from clustered precincts. As of now, she said the group has already audited about 40,000 ERs.

Former Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who earlier lauded PPCRV’s efforts in monitoring the polls, echoed the same sentiment.

“Hindi aabot ang canvassing natin ng 100 percent, otherwise PPCRV would be committing an unconstitutional act. Dapat ang magtapos po ang ating Congress,” he said.

The current tally of votes provided by the PPCRV came from the 96.13 percent of the election results as of 11:45 a.m. De Villa said they are still receiving transmissions but in little amounts.

She said that the almost four percent yet to be transmitted election returns account to less than a million votes.

“We cannot say that’s not material eh. But as we say, not all the votes coming in not all the votes coming in will be for one or the other, if the trend continues, then we can see a very small change as the votes are transmitted,” she said. —NB, GMA News