PPCRV: At least 200 VCMs need replacement

MANILA — The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting on Monday night received multiple reports of malfunctioning vote counting machines in the 2022 national and local elections.

"As of now, we have received report that there's a request for at least 200 replacement VCMs nationwide," said PPCRV spokesperson Vann Dela Cruz in a press briefing.

The Church-backed poll watchdog urged its volunteers and the public to be vigilant and keep an eye on the ballots.

If a VCM continues to malfunction, Dela Cruz said voters could leave their accomplished ballots to PPCRV watchers. They can also wait until the faulty VCMs are resolved to personally feed their ballots, he added.

Since the polls have already closed, Dela Cruz said voters in polling places would still be allowed to cast their ballots.

"Kung kailangang mag-antay magdamag, kung kailangang mag-antay hangang kinabukasan, ang inyong mga balota po ay mabibilang pagdating ng mga vote counting machines," he said.

PPCRV IT director William Yu said the malfunctioning VCMs were "not yet alarming".

"Two hundred out of 107,000 machines is not yet an alarming rate considering we are using 6-year-old machines," he said.

In the 2019 elections, Yu said they recorded more issues with VCMs, including failure of SD cards.

"It is an evolving situation. This is not the final numbers yet. It is very preliminary. But at this point, we feel that this is something Comelec can still manage," he said.

Yu. however, said the glitches will have an impact on the transmission of results.

"If the VCMs and SD cards arrive late, that means the transmission will also probably come late. Therefore, the posting of the results for those affected precincts will also be late. That is first effect," he said.

"In terms of our manual reconciliation or manual validation activity, it doesn't really affect the manual validation activity because that is normally done within a 1-week period. We still have time to do that."

In the interview, Yu said the PPCRV is expecting the results of the 2022 elections within 5 hours after the polls close.

"If we close at 7, by 12 midnight we should be able to see a trend, if the contests are close," he said.

He added, "In terms of the senatorial slate, the last 3 position generally take a few days."

Bookmark the ABS-CBN News Halalan results page to see the partial unofficial tally of election returns.

For other updates, visit ABS-CBN News' live blog here.

—With a report from Warren de Guzman, ABS-CBN News