{"id":378625,"date":"2022-10-28T06:06:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T20:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=378625"},"modified":"2022-10-28T06:06:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T20:06:12","slug":"20000-to-get-8-votes-from-northern-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/20000-to-get-8-votes-from-northern-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"$20,000 to get 8 votes from Northern Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_378626\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-378626\" style=\"width: 214px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Kayla-S.-Igitol23.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-378626\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Kayla-S.-Igitol23-214x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-378626\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kayla S. Igitol<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It will cost the Commonwealth Election Commission an estimated $20,000 to charter a boat that will bring a CEC team to the Northern Islands to get eight votes.<\/p>\n<p>This was learned from CEC executive director Kayla S. Igitol, who told Saipan Tribune in an interview Tuesday that they are looking at leaving Saipan for the Northern Islands aboard a charter boat either on Nov. 4 or 5.<\/p>\n<p>Igitol said the team will include one CEC staff, one Office of the Public Auditor staff, two election poll workers, two poll supervisors, and one police officer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey will [go to] the furthest island [first] and work their way back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>She said they will get four votes from Alamagan and four from Agrihan.<\/p>\n<p>Igitol said they could not find a helicopter that would bring them to the Northern Islands, hence the decision to charter a boat.<\/p>\n<p>She said that spending thousands of dollars to get fewer than 10 votes from the Northern Islands has never been an issue because \u201cthere is no price tag on democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery voter has the right to vote, whether it costs $100 or $20,000,\u201d Igitol said.<\/p>\n<p>As of Tuesday, 137 registered voters from the Northern Islands have already voted and there are 59, including the eight, who have yet to vote. Most NI voters currently live on Saipan.<\/p>\n<p>Jocelyn Frances Aldan Kapileo and Valentino Nicky Taisacan are gunning for Northern Islands mayor. Kapileo is running as an independent, while Taisacan is seeking the post under the Republican Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It will cost the Commonwealth Election Commission an estimated $20,000 to charter a boat that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":378627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[541],"class_list":["post-378625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-northern-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}