Volunteers of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting wait for election returns at the PPCRV Command Center in Sampaloc, Manila on May 12, 2025. Mark Demayo, ABS-CBN News/File 

MANILA — The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Tuesday attributed the reduction of votes in its partial, unofficial count to duplicates in the transmission of data.

PPCRV Spokesperson Ana De Villa Singson said they initially thought they had wrong data because there was a discrepancy between what they were receiving and what other organizations were showing.

This prompted the PCCRV to pause its update on the partial poll results, showing only its 12:01 a.m. It later updated the count before 8 a.m.

Its 12:01 a.m. data showed that, for example, senatorial candidate Bong Go got 26.22 million votes followed by Bam Aquino with 20.36 million. But with its new update, Go got 21.62 million votes, while Aquino got 16.76 million. All other candidates also had a reduced number of votes.

PPCRV said the reduction of votes was due to duplicates or dual count.

“The files that were received electronically, they get processed and they get converted into a format that we can process. That conversion takes time kaya hindi natin makuha lahat, and there were duplicates in the pre-2 a.m. version that we have,” PPCRV IT Director William Yu said.

He added that duplicates happen sometimes and it does not necessarily mean there was fraud. But PPCRV hopes Comelec can explain why there were duplicates, especially since the difference in number is by the millions.

“We have faith that there will be explanation. There will be transparency in what transpired and full explanation about the happening of the duplicates,” added PPCRV Spokesperson Ana De Villa Singson.

Singson said auditing the votes is now much more important because they can now check the pre-transmitted election returns to see if it matches with the electronically transmitted votes.

“I think the audits are even more critical now,” she said.

Filipinos worldwide can stay updated on election-related news and results via the “Halalan” page on ABS-CBN.com.