‘Woke lolas and titas’ on guard at PPCRV war room

MANILA, Philippines — “What parish are you from?” asked a kindly lady while I was taking a brief break from my duties at the PPCRV Encoding Center. “Oh, I’m here for TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service),” I replied, confirming to myself the extraordinary commitment that local churches had made toward ensuring that the votes we cast in this year’s midterm elections were counted properly.

Along with parish delegations, organized student groups and what looked like families, we were there to help encode voter returns from precincts all over the country.

The PPCRV stands for Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, founded in 1991 by the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, former Ambassador to the Holy See Tita de Villa and the late former Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Haydee Yorac.

“It was time for a national parish-based political but nonpartisan lay movement that works assiduously for clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful elections,” De Villa was quoted as saying during the first synchronized national and local elections.

Before any election, the PPCRV conducts voter education sessions and orientations for would-be poll watchers, while volunteers serve as poll “watchdogs” themselves.  When I dropped by our local poll center in our barangay, I spotted young people proudly wearing their PPCRV T-shirts and making themselves useful: directing addled voters to tables where they could get their ballots, escorting seniors to their seats and assisting them as they go through the entire process of computerized voting.

But it is the “Quick Count” that the PPCRV is best known for. The body receives election returns (ERs) from precincts and conducts a “parallel” count along with the Comelec, with volunteers undertaking the arduous task of encoding the precinct returns and other tasks necessary to ensure the accuracy of the count.

Changed dynamics

Chairing the operations for this year’s polls was Myla Villanueva who, according to a magazine story, is “considered a pioneer for women in the field of technology.” Her involvement with the PPCRV began in 2009 because, she said, the automated elections “had changed the dynamics of poll watching.” There needed to be a new poll watchers’ education protocol and voter education to orient ordinary voters on the then-newfangled technology, so they could better understand what was going on.

Indeed, the protests outside the Philippine International Convention Center where the Comelec count is being held proves that public skepticism about automated voting and counting has not abated.

As Villanueva told us after a meeting with the Comelec, one of PPCRV’s requirements for helping to make sense of the seven-hour delay of the transparency server—or “glitch,” as the Comelec describes it—was that the group be able to access the voting logs, something the poll body had previously resisted.

Villanueva is also a member of TOWNS Foundation that, aside from conducting the triannual search for awardees, also mounts projects and forums on issues of the day.

Before the May 13 elections, Villanueva posted a message on the TOWNS Viber group asking for volunteers from our ranks to “(wo)man” the computers and help encode ERs.

Before this, I must confess that as a voter and even a media professional I had generally ignored poll watching and counting operations. I was intensely interested and concerned with the results of any election, but I felt the job would be adequately covered by organizations like the PPCRV. Well, guess what, I discovered in my few hours’ stint seated in front of a computer at the PPCRV “war room” that the job of conducting a parallel count and thus ensuring that the results of the voting are counted and reflected faithfully, depended on the time and sweat equity of all of us citizens, TOWNS member or not.

Something sacred

But imagine my delight when upon arrival, I spotted Mel Alonzo (formerly of Pag-Ibig), Elsa Payumo (still known as “Miss Caltex,” nach), and Paulynn Paredes Sicam (formerly a peace commissioner and a journalist). We would later be joined by Lenlen Berberabe, (formerly of Pag-Ibig, too) for photo ops as the others were about to leave.

Other TOWNS women, it turned out, had also made it to the counting center but were seated farther away. Some time later, I was joined by Margie dela Rama and Deanie Lyn Ocampo (awardee for education).

The encoding task was simple enough: inserting the number of votes that every candidate garnered as shown in precinct returns into the proper forms. Not so simple—or easy—was seeing for oneself the actual number of votes “on the ground.” I inputted votes from precincts in Bataan and Laguna and the results did confirm the early results. I had a sinking feeling throughout my stint, though not for a moment did it occur to me to “doctor” the results.

“What surprised and broke my heart was seeing how only 61 to 63 percent of registered voters took the time to vote,”  Alonzo said.

Opening the sealed envelopes containing the ERs felt like we were doing something sacred. The small envelopes contained the voice of the Filipino people. Sadly, too many of them chose not to have their voices heard.

Sensing a connection

But for Ocampo, the experience was made immensely more meaningful when she brought her young daughter with her to the counting center. “I was certain that the experience would impress on her the seriousness, the responsibility that come before, during and after she casts her youth vote in 2022.

“As for me, reading ERs from Tondo, Tagaytay City, Benguet, Bataan (and) Negros Oriental, seemed to transport me to the communities. Oh, so this was how my fellow 300 voters in this precinct were thinking on Election Day. This sensing of our connection with the locals made me happy, even if the candidates they voted for were different from mine. It convinced me to work harder for poverty reduction and people’s participation in governance.”

Call us TOWNS women then “woke lolas and titas” who will never take for granted our participation in any election from now on!