THE Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said the delay in its usual election data reports on Monday was caused by “unexpected technical issues,” attributing it to differences in file formats and discrepancies in figures.
In a statement on Tuesday, the PPCRV said that the initial data they received after 8:15 pm on Monday came in different file formats, “causing delays in the release of the figures.”
It added that a discrepancy was later observed between PPCRV’s internal count, and the figures publicly reported by other transparency server recipients, which led them to hold off on publishing the results while under verification.
PPCRV explained that the move was “out of an abundance of caution and a commitment to accuracy.”
In an earlier statement on Monday, the PPCRV described the delay in accessing election data as “highly unusual,” noting that it was the first time such an incident had occurred since 2010.
“We have not experienced a delay of this nature, i.e., not even receiving a first data dump, especially despite over one-third of results already being transmitted,” it said.
The parish-based watchdog added its data was accurate and properly filtered for duplicate entries.
The PPCRV also flagged the discrepancy between the data accessible to them and the figures already reflected on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) public access website in terms of election return receipts.
In a press briefing on the same day, Comelec Chairman George Garcia explained that the discrepancy between the figures from the Comelec transparency servers and those from other watchdogs may occur because election data takes time to be translated into a human-readable format.
In contrast, data transmitted to the Comelec transparency server goes directly from the precincts, allowing for faster processing.
Mr. Garcia assured that the Comelec servers and other servers are all accurate, as they both receive data from the precincts that have already transmitted the votes.
“These entities… receive more or less 98% election returns, and if there is any discrepancy, it’s only by a point. The main server of Comelec is always the first to receive the data,” Mr. Garcia said in Filipino. — Edg Adrian A. Eva
