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Counting of votes done in record 4 hours, 7 minutes
Lower turnout in runoff than in general elections
Commonwealth Election Commission board chair Frances M. Sablan was happy to announce that they completed the counting of votes for the runoff election in a record four hours and seven minutes at Multi-Purpose Center in Susupe on Friday night.
In an interview, Sablan said the last general elections in which they processed the special election for a Saipan Senate seat gave them a firsthand experience on how to go about executing the process and find ways to make it smoother and faster.
What they did, Sablan said, was they started early and they didn’t have too many absentee ballots to process because they received only 300-some. Votes cast in the runoff race were counted manually instead of using a machine.
“Because we didn’t have to process so many of the absentees to delay us, plus we started earlier, so we [finished the tabulation in] a record of four hours and seven minutes,” said the beaming CEC board chair.
CEC executive director Robert Guerrero announced the last unofficial results of the counting of ballots at about 11:20pm.
The 2009 runoff race took longer because they ran past midnight, Sablan said.
She also noted a lower turnout in the runoff race compared to the Nov. 4 general elections.
A total of 11,495 voted for in runoff. The number excludes about 2,000-plus absentee votes. In the last general elections, a total of 13,798 votes were cast, for a 76.72 percent turnout.
