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7-day early voting for runoff kicks off tomorrow
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Posted on Nov 13 2014
The seven-day early voting for the gubernatorial runoff race between Gov. Eloy S. Inos/Ralph DLG. Torres and Heinz Hofschneider/Ray N. Yumul will kick off tomorrow, Friday.
Commonwealth Election Commission executive director Robert A. Guerrero told Saipan Tribune yesterday that the early voting will start on Friday, from 8:30am to 4pm.
Just like in the Nov. 4 general elections, early voting for Saipan and the Northern Islands will be at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center in Susupe.
For Tinian and Rota, early voting will be at both islands’ respective Department of Public Safety buildings.
Guerrero hopes that early voters will not come all at the same time on the first day on Friday to avoid overcrowding as what had happened during the last early voting.
He said in the last early voting, it was smooth on the second day to the seventh day, in which the flow moved steadily and voters completed the process from 10 to 15 minutes at the most.
For this early voting, Guerrero said they will put more election booths inside the buildings to hopefully avoid crowding.
In the last early voting, there were 3,800 early voters.
Guerrero said they are expecting the same number of early voters for this runoff.
For the absentee voting, the executive director said they already sent 2,300 absentee ballots on Monday and that voters may receive them this weekend or early next week.
He said the request for absentee ballots was prior to the Nov. 4 general elections.
“If they marked general runoff, they get absentee ballots,” Guerrero said.
“We have to receive all the ballots no later than Dec. 5th with the understanding that it must be postmarked on election day or Nov. 21st,” he added.
The Inos-Torres machinery got 46.6 percent of the total votes cast, just about 4 percentage points less than the required 50 percent-plus-one rule that would have resulted in their team being declared outright winner, preventing a runoff election.
