The Commission on Elections on Tuesday asked its citizen arm, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, to explain allegations of vote manipulation stemming from the discrepancy in the votes garnered by party- list group Confederation of Non-Stock Savings and Loan Association.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez did not discount the possibility of the poll body investigating Consla’s ’s claim but stressed that it is the obligation of the PPCRV first to address the issue.
“The letter is basically pointing out discrepancies between the PPCRV count and the Comelec count. Recently, the PPCRV has admitted that there were some miscalculations on their part. So I think in the first instance the people who should do the explaining is the PPCRV,” Jimenez said.
The Comelec official PPCRV should look into its system first to determine why its quick count did not match the Comelec’s official tally.
“You look at the problem. In this case, the discrepancy is between an unofficial source and the official result. So look at the unofficial [result] before you disturb the official one,” Jimenez pointed out.
Jimenez said the Comelec was willing to assist the PPCRV in explaining the discrepancy but it should be done in accordance with the process.
In the case of Consla, Jimenez said the “logical first step would be to look at the PPCRV results since its officials have said they are willing to explain the discrepancy.’’
In its letter-complaint, Consla noted how the PPCRV Quick Count, which was sourced from the Transparency Server, showed on May 9 that the party-list group already has 342,513 votes.
The next day, the party-list group noted that the PPCRV tally showed they already have 523,753 votes at 11 a.m. and 555,896 votes by 12 noon to occupy Rank #14 in the tally.
The results were posted on the Twitter feed of the PCCRV which became the basis for the complaint by Consla.
Earlier, a candidate for Buhay party-list group executed an affidavit attesting to the discrepancy on the votes garnered by Consla.
Arnold Arriola of Buhay, in his affidavit, said he was able to take photos of the partial and unofficial votes for party-list groups generated by the PPCRV Quick Count, which showed Consla garnering 555,896.
Consla has also formally asked the Comelec to conduct an investigation on the discrepancy of the votes it received.
Earlier, the PPCRV admitted to having errors during its conduct of quick count of the results of the May 9 polls, wherein it used as basis the Comelec’s Transparency Server.
In an interview, PPCRV Communications and Media Director Ana de Villa Singson admitted that there were indeed “issues” that surfaced during their conduct of the quick count, specifically in the party-list race.
“Our screens are networked. There was a networking connectivity issue rather than the data. The data was always correct. It’s just the connectivity issue that is why the ones projected on the screen were wrong,” Singson said.