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Palacios, Apatang first one to reserve date to file candidacy
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Posted on Jun 02 2022
Sablan
Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang, who are as running as governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, as independents in the Nov. 8 general elections, will be the first ones to file their candidacy with the Commonwealth Election Commission.
Acting CEC executive director Robin Sablan told Saipan Tribune in an interview yesterday said that the first day of submission for nominating petition and candidacy is July 11, and Aug. 10 is the last day to do so.
The CEC has to certify all nominating petitions by Sept. 23.
Sablan said he reserved July 11 at 9am for Palacios and Apatang to submit their nominating petition and candidacy after they called the office to schedule their filing date.
Sablan said that Ramon Blas “RB” Camacho, who is running for mayor of Saipan as an independent candidate, is also scheduled for July 11 at 10am to file his nominating petition and candidacy.
Sablan said they are doing this reservation system to avoid jampacking the CEC office. He said they don’t want all the candidates to come in all at once, like what happened last election, where a political party would come in at the same time with their many candidates. Sablan said they had to process each candidate one by one and there was a lot of waiting time and it took them two hours to process all candidates of a party.
He said when a candidate who has already reserved a date changes his or her mind, he or she has to call the CEC to inform them to avoid any mix-ups.
“We normally have 10 [person capacity] here [inside CEC office] so we do this so that we don’t get jampacked,” he said.
Sablan said they expect to receive more calls for reservations next week.
July 11 is also the last day to establish residency requirements.
Sablan said when a U.S. citizen wants to relocate to the CNMI, he or she has to stay at least 120 days in order to register to vote and claim residency.
“So if you come after that [July 11] , it’s already less than 120 days. You’ll have to wait until the election is done. And this is for people from outside, like they want to come here to work and they also want to register to vote and be a resident,” he said.
