by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - After five long weeks, the Guam Election Commission has completed the handcount of five precincts as part of the audit of the 2010 general election. GEC executive director Maria Pangelinan says the handcount showed no major differences from the certified results from 2010.

Ultimately she says staffers were able to learn about being more efficient when it comes to handcounts. "So now through both the 2012 that just happened last year and the 2010 audit, we've learned to do good hand counts," Pangelinan said. "We've learned how to make it more efficient we cut probably the time by a third maybe even more on how fast we can handcount."

Pangelinan adds her staff is still putting together all their findings of the handcount and hope to present a preliminary report to commissioners this Wednesday at its regular meeting. She adds while the GEC staff works on finalizing the ballot production audit, they have completed the list of purged voters, which consisted of over 4,700 voters who didn't vote in the 2010 and 2012 general elections.

She says the new law requires those names are to be published in a daily circulated newspaper and also notify purged voters through mail followed by another notification sent after 30 days of publishing.