by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - It's the start of what's set to take a few weeks, but the Guam Election Commission started the official recount of over 11,000 ballots as part of the audit of the 2010 general election. Sealed away for over two years, the GEC officially began the handcount of an estimated thousands of ballots as part of the audit of the 2010 general election.

"So we will count one precinct at a time so today at 9:30am we started with precinct 10 from Yona," noted executive director Maria Pangelinan. As part of the election reform mandate to conduct an audit of the 2010 general election, the commission decided to handcount a small sample of ballots from 5 different precincts - Precinct 10 in Yona, 14 from Mongmong-Toto-Maite, 15b and 15c from Barrigada, and 19b from Yigo.

Pangelinan explained the process of the audit, saying, "Initially we counted the unused ballots. Those ballots that were not used and X'ed-out before they went to the election return center. Then we accounted for all the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots, and absentee ballots were dealt with last week. And so then we needed to count the number of signatures in the signature roster to verify what was put on the election commission form number thirteen."

The auditing team of GEC staff started the handcount of cast ballots from precinct 10 with the federal race. Of the 762 cast ballots handcounted, Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo running unopposed received 671 - two more votes than the certified results in 2010. It's attributed to votes being considered undervotes in 2010 due to light pencil marking not visible through machine tabulation.

In the partisan ballot of the gubernatorial race, out of 762 cast ballots, the Republican team of Eddie Calvo/Ray Tenorio received 377 votes - one less than the certified results with the Democrat team of Carl Gutierrez/Frank Aguon, Jr. receiving 373 -two less than the certified results in that precinct. The change is attributed to probably stray votes where a voter might have placed their ballot in another precinct in the village. The seven total write-in votes, 1 overvote and 4 undervotes are matched up.

Ultimately, Pangelinan says documentation is key and will be relying heavily on the EC13's as a critical element to this election process in comparing results from the certified numbers to the handcount today and weeks to come. "All in all, it's great preparation for the 2014, so this will another set of experiences that we can build upon to go to on to the 2014," she said.

The recount will continue tomorrow and everyday thereafter until all five precincts are counted starting at 930 to 11:30 in the morning and resuming from 1:30 to 4 in the afternoon.