CHURCH-BASED watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) reported on Monday that missing names of voters and defective vote-counting machines (VCM) hounded the 2019 midterm elections.
Agnes Gervacio, PPCRV media director, said the reports were received by help desks manned by volunteers. There are also 300,000 PPCRV volunteers across the country, she said.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez however said in a press briefing that the 2019 midterm elections were “generally successful.”
“In general because we’re seeing that a lot precincts opened, and reports that people cast vote successfully, we think elections are generally successful. This elections might be a little problematic but we are resolving the issues,” Jimenez said, as quoted by ABS-CBN News.
According to Comelec data, there are 61.8 million registered voters.
Jimenez said that about 400 to 600 out of 85,000 VCMs had technical difficulties.
“These are the VCMs we used in 2016. I cannot rule out that possibility that these malfunctioned because of that… But we still need to find out if that’s true,” he said.
The fourth copy of election returns for PPCRV’s unofficial parallel vote count will be delivered to the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila after the closing of polls.
