by Jason Salas, KUAM News Sunday, January 06, 2008 Subscribe to Jason's newsfeed   E-mail this article Printable version KUAM Toolbar Web Widgets Get RSS headlines

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The Guam Election Commission, after a long and generally conflict-free day of managing the polls and then counting the cast ballots, mustered enough energy to run one last batch of results this morning, releasing the unofficial final tabulations for the Decision 2008 special election. (Take note that I said the night "generally" went without issue.)

By way of a systems error attributed to a "data oversight" - remember that phrase, you'll likely be hearing it often in the near future, vis a vis "wardrobe malfunction" - the totality of the 54 island voting precincts could not be quantified when the agency closed up shop at GCC at around 1am. 49 precincts in all were accounted for prior to this last run.

Initial projections by the GEC indicate voter turnout to be around 44%. John Terlaje, chairman of the agency's board of directors, told KUAM News that although 21,230 ballots were cast, the number of votes counted last night and into this morning do not add up to that amount due to overvotes and undervotes. Essentially, spoiled ballots.

Not like the extra 1,000-some ballots dramatically altered the outcome in either race. B.J. Cruz actually extended his lead over runner-up Telo Taitague by around 1,300 votes, giving him 41.5% of the vote in the senatorial competition to fill the vacancy created by the death of beloved statesman Tony Unpingco. Taitague secured better than 30% of the vote, with Cruz's Democrat colleague, former senator Tom Ada, finishing last with nearly 30% of the vote. And things didn't fare any better for supporters of slot machine gaming at the Guam Greyhound Race Park, as Prop "A" still was put down by nearly two-thirds of those participating in Super Saturday.

The GEC has penciled in a meeting for this Wednesday at 4pm, during which time the results will be certified.

View the latest election results
View the UOG exit poll results