Tweaking the election law

The Commonwealth Election Commission will lobby the 15th Legislature for several amendments to the election law, CEC executive director Gregorio Sablan said yesterday.

According to Sablan, the Office of the Public Auditor, Attorney General’s Office, and the Election Commission are putting together a list of their concerns in relation to election law and procedures. The three agencies will be drafting legislation that they hope will be introduced in both houses of the Legislature later this month or in early February 2006.

“Improving the election law and the commission’s regulations is an ongoing process,” Sablan said, before citing the numerous lessons learned from recent elections and recommendations made by community members.

The NMI Election Reform Act was enacted in 2000.

The areas of improvement that the agencies are looking at are the requirements for campaign finance reports, political contributions, and absentee voting procedures.

Sablan said the OPA was mulling the possibility of increasing the disclosure threshold for campaign contributors from $100 to $500.

Currently, political candidates are required to disclose the name of any contributor who makes a donation of at least $100 to the campaign. Public Auditor Michael Sablan had said that the amount does not seem reasonable, since the computation of aggregate contributions include not only cash donations, but in-kind contributions as well.

CEC’s Sablan also said that there might be a need to put a cap on the amount of money that one contributor can put into a candidate’s campaign fund.

Moreover, the last election raised several concerns regarding absentee voting procedures. Absentee ballots figured significantly in the last election, with the poll voting being too close to call. The Commonwealth had to wait two weeks to find out the final winners.

Sablan reported that the Election Commission was considering a suggestion to have the absentee ballots counted at the same time as the poll votes. “To do this, we will have to adjust the timeline. We have to make sure overseas voters have enough time to receive the ballots and mail them back,” he said.

Clarifications also need to be made on the issue of absentee ballots that have no postmarks. The CEC faced a lawsuit following the Nov. 5 election over 72 ballots that it had discarded on account of indecipherable postmarks.