PPCRV volunteers assist voters in Iloilo City

ILOILO CITY — Volunteers of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) started serving voters early in the morning Monday to ensure honest and peaceful elections.

Ruby Fullon, chair of the social committee of the Espousal of Our Lady Parish and coordinator for the PPCRV, said they have more than 50 volunteers deployed in eight polling centers of Mandurriao district.

“We have provided precincts to our PPCRV volunteers and we also have roving teams, which check volunteers every now and then,” she said in an interview.

She said they set up assistance center where they help voters locate their precincts and “where they are supposed to vote if they have gone to a wrong place”.

Moreover, they also received complaints of non-functioning voters registration and verification machines (VRVM) and vote counting machines (VCM).

“Initially they functioned but later there were some problems,” she said, adding that this concern was properly directed to persons in-charge of the precinct or referred to the principal or persons-in-charge of the school.

The PPCRV will be staying the whole day at the Mandurriao Elementary School, which hosts the most-numbered of precincts in the district with 13 of the 44 precincts. The rest are scattered in seven other schools.

Meantime, Jonathan Sayno, Elections Assistant of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Iloilo City, said the Election Board (EB) is now doing manual and automation verification of voters after some of the VRVM failed to function.

“It is not a problem. If the VRVM does not function, we can proceed with the manual verification using the Election Day Certified Voters List,” Sayno explained.

He added that in case the VCM is not functioning, voters can still proceed with the voting. The EB only has to gather their ballots although the voters can no longer see their voter’s receipt because it will be fed to the VCM towards the end of the voting time.

Voting started at 6 a.m. and will end at 6 p.m.