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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
What they did, Sablan said, was they started early and they didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we didn\u2019t 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,\u201d said the beaming CEC board chair.<\/p>\n
CEC executive director Robert Guerrero announced the last unofficial results of the counting of ballots at about 11:20pm. <\/p>\n
The 2009 runoff race took longer because they ran past midnight, Sablan said.<\/p>\n
She also noted a lower turnout in the runoff race compared to the Nov. 4 general elections.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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