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MANILA, Philippines – The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is all set in its efforts to monitor the May 9, 2022 national and local elections.

In a media briefing on Friday, May 6, the PPCRV said it has reached its minimum target of 500,000 volunteers nationwide to keep an eye on the election process on the ground – from the deployment of election-related equipment to the monitoring of various activities on election day and beyond.

For instance, PPCRV volunteers are in their assigned polling precincts to observe the final testing and sealing of vote-counting machines (VCM), said PPCRV spokesperson Vann dela Cruz. “Even before this week, in the deployment and dispatch of automated election equipment and ballot boxes, our volunteers were there,” he added in a mix of English and Filipino.

The PPCRV also set up a command center at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Quadricentennial Pavilion where volunteers will encode the physical copies of the election returns (ER) printed by the VCMs after polls close.

This is part of PPCRV’s unofficial parallel count, where the vote counts encoded from the ERs are checked against those electronically transmitted by the VCMs to the servers of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

“As an accredited citizens’ arm, we are given the 4th copy of the printed transmission copies of the election returns,” said Dela Cruz. PPCRV volunteers in some 106,000 clustered precincts across the country will receive these ERs, which are then delivered to the command center at UST.

There will also be a help desk where phone lines are open to receive election-related reports. Lawyers from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) and Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) will be on hand to assist in the help desk.

Around 200 volunteers are expected to help out at the command center floor, Dela Cruz said. He also mentioned that they will strictly enforce health and security protocols at their command center.

The PPCRV, a national parish-based political but non-partisan lay movement, has played a major role in monitoring the election process since it was established in 1991.

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Dela Cruz said the PPCRV is still accepting volunteers to help the PPCRV in its election monitoring efforts. However, he noted that volunteers should be non-partisan or not affiliated with any political party or candidate.

“There have been different groups reaching out, and they want to bring in their volunteers. But some groups are tied to certain political parties or candidates. Automatically, we tell them respectfully that we cannot accept them as volunteers.”

Volunteers will also have to sign a waiver affirming their non-partisanship. “The moment we find out that they are [partisan], we’ll respectfully ask them to leave,” he noted. – Rappler.com