PPCRV receives nearly 10 percent of election returns

More than 24 hours after the voting period officially closed, election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has received nearly 10 percent of election returns from the midterm polls, an official said.

Most of the returns PPCRV has received came from the cities of Manila, Caloocan, and Quezon City, the group's media director, Agnes Gervacio, told reporters Tuesday night.

Board member Dr. Arwin Serrano earlier said the council has received around 8,000 returns and might get up to 12,000 to 15,000 before the day ends.

LOOK: PPCRV volunteers manually encoding votes from election returns into computers; the electronically transmitted results will be validated against the encoded data @gmanews pic.twitter.com/QHlRLpw6bR

— Nicole Lagrimas (@nclagrimas) May 14, 2019

Tasked to conduct an unofficial parallel count of votes, the PPCRV deploys volunteers who manually encode election returns into computers for validation against the results transmitted electronically from the vote-counting machines to the Commission on Elections' servers.

The PPCRV will close its encoding operations at 10 p.m. Tuesday and resume at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Gervacio said, but added that they will continue receiving election returns as they come.

"We don't think it's going to further delay because we're able to keep up with the election returns as we receive them," she said, adding that there is no shortage of PPCRV volunteers and they may adjust operation hours as they see fit.

The PPCRV prepared for two to three weeks of operations, which have so far been relatively peaceful, she said.

As of 5:53 p.m., results shown from the Comelec's transparency server reveal that votes from 83,608 out of 85.769 clustered precincts have been counted, with reelectionists Cynthia Villar and Grace Poe leading the senatorial race. — BM, GMA News