PPCRV deploys over 500k volunteers for May 9 polls

More than half a million volunteers will serve as poll watchers and assistance staff for the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on May 9.

A majority of these volunteers will be assigned to voter's assistance desks and to help maintain order in polling precincts.

The PPCRV has established a command center at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Quadricentennial Pavilion for volunteers to encode physical copies of election returns (ERs) for an unofficial parallel count.

This parallel count compares encoded vote counts from ERs against electronically transmitted data from vote-counting machines (VCMs) to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) servers.

As the accredited citizen's arm of the Comelec, the PPCRV's task includes ensuring that data from hard copy election returns matches electronic election return data.

PPCRV chairperson Myla Villanueva encouraged volunteers to be present in precincts as witnesses of the truth.