by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - With less than a handful of days until this Saturday's Primary Election for Decision 2012, the Guam Election Commission is taking the necessary steps to ensure all goes smoothly. According to GEC executive director Maria Pangelinan, Elections Systems & Software is conducting a preventive maintenance session on its four tabulators along with delivering voting booths to the different polling places and preparing for a test election to ensure the integrity of the machines.

Pangelinan said, "We will have what we call a test deck, we will marked ballots, different ways, all Democrats, all Republicans, crossovers, no votes on them and we will have all kinds of filled out ballots and we'll take it through the machines and see if the results we were expecting come out from these machines."

The test election is set for this Friday at the University of Guam Field House. And while they have yet to finalize the total number of registered voters, during last night's GEC board of directors meeting, Pangelinan informed commissioners that its preliminary count fell shy of 49,000 voters. The GEC is currently cross-checking names and expect to issue the final list of registered voters to the respective mayors' offices Wednesday.

The GEC board will meet again this Thursday.