Namfrel to Count Votes; PPCRV to Conduct Parallel Tally

MANILA, May 6, 2010-The National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) said it would conduct an independent count of the votes for the May 10 automated polls.

Namfrel failed to get accreditation as citizens' arm of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) after the poll body ruled that its officials were partisan.

The task which Namfrel had been doing in the past elections was given to the Catholic Church-backed Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

However, the election watchdog yesterday announced that it would still make an independent tallying, counting and canvassing of votes through its "Bilang ng Bayan" operations.

In a statement, the body said their operation is solely based on copies of the Election Returns (ERs) which will be printed by the Comelec's precinct count optical (PCOS) machines.

Each PCOS machine will be printing 30 copies of the ERs at each voting precinct. The first eight copies will be distributed to various Comelec Board of Canvassers, political parties, and accredited citizens' arm.

The rest of the copies, meanwhile, will be made available to the public as well as to local political parties and local or regional media organizations.

Namfrel said its Bilang ng Bayan operations will be run out of its traditional operations center at La Salle Greenhills, where it has been running its Operation Quick Count for every election since 1984.

The watchdog added that it had already completed its training for all its provincial chapters through six regional training sessions held in Metro Manila, Davao City, Zamboanga City, Cebu City, and San Fernando in La Union.

"Volunteers have been trained to collect Election Returns and to encode them into Namfrel's secure, encrypted website which will tabulate results on a municipal, provincial, regional, and national basis," Namfrel said.

The organization further said that they will tally the results on their website, www.namfrel.com.ph, as results are filled from its provincial units.

"The data from Election Returns will allow us to consolidate counts from precinct level to municipality, provincial, regional, and national levels," it said.

The Bilang ng Bayan is being conducted in partnership with the National Secretariat for Social Action of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, the Protestant Church, and Ulama networks across the country.

For its part, the PPCRV officials earlier said they will be conducting their own parallel count of votes based from the fourth copy of the ERs a day after the election day.

As Comelec's official citizens' arm, the PPCRV is entitled to get two sets of results, first from the poll body and the other from the ERs.

The poll watchdog will have the Pope Pius XII auditorium at UN Avenue in Manila as its command center.

Ana de Villa-Singson, PPCRV Communications and Media Director, said as early as 7 a.m. on May 11, they will already be coming up with partial and unofficial tallies of the ERs for the positions of president, vice president, and senators.

She said the unofficial tally of the ERs is expected to be finished by May 14. (Roy Lagarde/CBCPNews)