Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth Govendo has suggested that the Commonwealth Election Commission and the islands\u2019 lawmakers do something to make \u201cabsentee ballot voters feel better than right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Govendo advised CEC to seek \u201cextra money\u201d from the Legislature to have a safe storage for the absentee ballots.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in the future, you go and get these absentee ballots everyday, put down the date and time and count them,\u201d said the judge during Friday\u2019s hearing in which he announced his decision dismissing the election protest filed by Vicente Manglona Atalig against his closest rival, Rota Mayor-elect Joseph Songao Inos.<\/p>\n
Govendo said the statute states that the absentee ballots shall be postmarked not later than the date of the election and shall be received by the commission not later than 14 days.<\/p>\n
He said all absentee ballots shall be removed from the post office no later than 14 days after the election.<\/p>\n
The statute says that commencing with the date when the absentee ballots are first sent out until 14 days after the election, no less than two persons shall go to the post office, Govendo said.<\/p>\n
The word shall, the judge pointed out, means it is mandatory.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, in this case, that was not done. All the ballots were picked up on the Nov. 15,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Govendo said since CEC did not do that, the postmark becomes very important than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s got to be postmark,\u201d he said. \u201cThe explanation that was given for not picking them up daily was we don\u2019t have a place to store them safely.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge asked the legislators to \u201cturn around and take at look at this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Govendo granted Inos\u2019 motion to dismiss Atalig\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Atalig\u2019s election challenge was not filed within the seven-day rule as required by the statute, said the judge as he explained that the motion is granted on jurisdictional grounds only.<\/p>\n
Atalig filed the lawsuit seeking a court action to count the 72 unopened ballot envelopes. He sued the CEC and its commissioners.<\/p>\n
Atalig, of the Republican Party, also named as a real party in interest co-defendant Joseph Inos of the Covenant who got 11 more votes than him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth Govendo has suggested that the Commonwealth Election Commission and the islands\u2019 lawmakers do something to make \u201cabsentee ballot voters feel better than right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96416","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}