Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting

Founded	October 1991
Founder	H.E. Jaime Cardinal Sin, Haydee Yorac, Henrietta T. de Villa, Bishop Gabriel Reyes, Msgr. Bayani Valenzuela
Type	Non-profit NGO
Focus	Elections, plebiscites and referendums
Location	Pope Pius XII Center, United Nations Avenue, Ermita, Manila, Philippines
Area served	Nationwide
Services	Democracy reform in the Philippines
Fields	Poll watching, advocacy, electoral reforms
Key people	Henrietta T. de Villa (Chairperson)
Volunteers	500,000+
Website	http://www.ppcrv.org/

The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is a non-partisan, non-sectarian non-profit organization affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines that works to ensure free, fair and fraud-free elections in the Philippines. The organization has been the "citizens arm" of the Commission of Elections since 2010. PPCRV conducts the Unofficial Parallel Count of returns after the election.

PPCRV's activity includes advocating for electoral reforms, conducting parallel manual auditing in automated elections, coordinating parishes to conduct poll-watching, providing legal assistance related to elections, reporting of electoral violations, providing voters' assistance services, and voters' education.

History

The Roman Catholic Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, held in February 1991, called for reforms in the conduct of elections in the Philippines. In May 1991, Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila, COMELEC Commissioner Haydee Yorac, then-Laity President Henrietta T. de Villa, Bishop Gabriel Reyes, Msgr. Bayani Valenzuela, and thirty parish lay leaders conceived of the idea of the PPCRV in Mandaluyong City. In October 1991, the PPCRV was launched at St. Paul University, Quezon City, with around one thousand laypeople from the parishes of the Archdiocese of Manila. The next month, with the support of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, the PPCRV expanded its operations nationwide.

PPCRV's poll-watching activities began with the 1992 presidential elections. Then, 346,688 PPCRV volunteers participated in poll-watching, voters’ assistance, assisting the Board of Election Inspectors, protecting election returns, monitoring electoral exercise, and watching the canvassing of votes.

Relation with COMELEC

In April 2013, PPCRV was accused by the Archbishop of Lipa Ramon Arguelles of being a COMELEC lapdog since the conduct of the 2010 general elections, an allegation that the chairperson of PPCRV, Henrietta T. de Villa, disputes. The organization has been a "citizens arm" of the Commission of Elections since 2010.

In 2010, it had objected to the National Movement for Free Elections' (NAMFREL) application as a citizen's arm of COMELEC, stating that a dual system would interfere with election watch. NAMFREL had never objected to PPCRV's applications as a citizen arm in previous elections. The feud seems to be over as both parties were accredited by COMELEC for the 2013 midterm elections and agreed on their respective functions.

Funding

There was an allegation that the PPCRV was receiving foreign funding for its operations, something that the organization denied.

2013 election return error

During the transmission of votes, on the night after the polls for the 2013 midterm elections had closed, the PPCRV server released inaccurate data which was attributed to a formatting error in the server's software. The counting of transmitted results was suspended for an hour while the software, provided by Smartmatic Corporation, was fixed.