PPCRV: There were discrepancies but no poll fraud

There were discrepancies found in the transmission of election results from 29 of the over 76,000 clustered precincts during the May 10 nationwide automated elections, but these do not indicate poll fraud, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said Wednesday. "These are very small, insignificant discrepancies, but there was no pattern of fraud. The election was clean, I have no second thoughts about that. If there were attempts at cheating, it was not very systematic," said PPCRV chairperson Henrietta de Villa at a press briefing in Manila. PPCRV media communications director Ana de Villa-Singson, during the same briefing, said they discovered the discrepancies when they compared the 43,035 manually encoded election returns (ER) to its transmitted form. Each of the 76,347 clustered precincts has one ER, 30 printed copies of which are distributed before and after the transmission to groups or persons accredited by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), which bases its count and certificates of canvass on the transmitted ER. Singson said 29 out of the 43,035 precincts or 0.07 percent of clustered precincts — or about 17,000 votes — whose results they have manually encoded do "not exactly match" the transmitted results. The 43,035 clustered precincts constitute 56.4 percent of the total number of clustered precincts nationwide. Four types of discrepancies Singson said they found four types of discrepancies, one of which is that the printed ER reflects a certain number of votes cast in the precinct although no such votes were shown in the transmitted data. She said they recorded four incidents of this or 0.01 percent of the precincts they have already encoded. The next kind is that the ER shows a specific number of votes cast but the transmitted data show that the total votes for one candidate is one count less. Singson said they recorded two incidents of this or 0.005 percent. Singson, however, noted that no particular candidate was singled out in the two incidents. "There is no pattern," she said. The third kind of discrepancy is that the ER reflects the votes cast but that its transmitted form would only show less than 10. She said they found 19 precincts with the same kind of discrepancies, which is 0.05 of the total number of clustered precincts. The fourth kind is that the printed ER show zero votes cast for all positions but that the transmitted data reflect votes cast. She said they recorded four instances of this or 0.01 percent. The PPCRV conducted the parallel count by having two teams encode the ERs, a computer software compare the results, and having another team counter-check the supposed discrepancy. No indication of fraud Echoing De Villa, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) president Jun Nicdao said the number of clustered precincts with discrepancies is too small to think that election fraud was committed. "I think we have to concur with the observation of the PPCRV... mukhang walang fraud na nangyari dito (I don"t think there was fraud)," he said during the same briefing. KBP was PPCRV's partner in the conduct of the parallel count. De Villa said the discrepancies could be attributed to human error or computer problem. She said they have already elevated their findings to the Commission on Elections (Comelec), which is expected to report it to Smartmatic, the technology provider in the automated elections. “We have not elevated this to Smartmatic, that's for Comelec to do that, not for us," De Villa said. The PPCRV has received 92.02 percent of the ERs as of Wednesday morning, but Singson said it will scale down its operations to 22 computers and volunteers from 100 because they are nearing the finish of their parallel count. — KBK/RSJ, GMANews.TV