by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - The Guam Election Commission is hard at work trying to complete the audit of the 2010 general election. And both of Guam's political parties spoke about how they feel the progress is going.

GEC executive director Maria Pangelinan says the audit is necessary, saying simply, "Is it a waste of time? No."

It's something both Republican Party of Guam chairman Mike Benito and Democratic Party of Guam executive director Carlo Branch can agree on. "Obviously when you're talking about voter integrity and ensuring that the integrity of the vote is there, I think it's important," said Benito. Branch added, "The Democrats have always argued that this is not an attempt to retry the election of 2010; this is however an attempt to make sure this does not happen again in 2014."

The GEC has spent the past four weeks working on the audit, which consists of handcounting a handful of precincts from the 2010 general election. "There are no major differences in the handcount versus the certified results of 2010," said Pangelinan.

Its results Benito says he believed would come about and is definitely pleased with. He said, "I was pretty confident that the numbers were going to remain relatively the same, and they did, as a matter of fact the changes almost marginal if anything, minus one vote plus one vote."

Branch, however, says while one or two votes may seem minimal from each of the precincts, he says the results from the 2010 election were only about 105 votes away from a mandatory runoff. "There are 52 precincts - if you take 52 times two and that could very well force the island into a runoff if that was the law's intent," he explained. "So the argument that one or two votes either way will not affect the outcome of that election in 2010 is inaccurate."

He adds the audit has several other components including an audit of the ballot stock along with the processes to ensure no fraud occurred. Benito meanwhile says mistakes could have been made, but believes once the handcount is done, the GEC needs to work on making improvements. As for Pangelinan, she says the ballot reconciliation and production audit is a continuous work in progress.

Of note is that the GEC finished the gubernatorial count of Precinct 15c in Barrigada on Wednesday, which showed the Eddie Calvo-Ray Tenorio team receiving 394 votes (one less vote from the certified results), with the Carl Gutierrez-Frank Aguon, Tr. team remaining the same with 298 votes. The GEC hopes to finish the handcount by its February 20 meeting.