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MANILA, Philippines — Election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has not recorded any discrepancies in its audit of physical election returns (ERs) from the first Bangsamoro Parliamentary elections, its spokesperson said Monday.

PPCRV spokesperson Ana Singson said they had completed scanning 40.10%, or 2,090, of the 5,212 ERs from the precincts. She also said they were confident they could finish the unofficial parallel count of the voter receipts by Wednesday.

READ: PPCRV flags unreadable election returns in BARMM polls

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“So far, there are no discrepancies between the transmitted and the scanned physical copies, but as I mentioned a while ago, there are more [ERs] that are not readable,” she told reporters in an interview.

Singson earlier said 11 of the 1,826 ERs they checked last Friday were unreadable. She noted that six more ERs for Monday’s operations could not be scanned properly.

Despite the issue with unreadable ERs, Singson said the PPCRV had not found any other irregularities in its audit.

“Aside from that, we have not found any true irregularities yet, which is good, and we hope it stays that way because people ask us, why do you do this, why do you spend so much time and resources to find one or three or even no discrepancies. Well, the purpose is to find if the elections are clean, honest, accurate, meaningful, peaceful elections,” she added.

She underscored the importance of a manual parallel count to verify the integrity of the electronically transmitted votes and confirm whether the results from the data server match the physical ERs.

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Singson also said the PPCRV was receiving more ERs from the final testing and sealing (FTS) than from actual voter receipts. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) conducts FTS using official ballots to ensure that all systems are working accurately for the elections.

READ: PPCRV to finish BARMM election returns audit by Wednesday

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Meanwhile, Comelec Chairperson George Erwin Garcia told the Inquirer on Monday that the issue with unreadable ERs was not observed during the FTS.

Garcia added that they would determine whether other copies of the ERs in the same precinct were also unreadable.

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Singson said the issue should not have reached the FTS stage, adding that “prior to that, I would think that the machines should have been properly maintained by Miru because those are rented, we didn’t buy them. The maintenance is not on us.” /mcm