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Guam - A concession speech from Democrats Carl Gutierrez and Gary Gumataotao is highly unlikely anytime soon, as they've officially filed for a manual audit with the Guam Election Commission.


Decision 2014 isn't over for the democrats, as Gutierrez Gumataotao campaign chairman Kin Perez has written to the GEC requesting for a manual audit on the unofficial results of the general election. In a letter submitted Monday afternoon, Perez congratulates the GEC staff and management on the conduct of the 2014 General Election. However he asks for a manual audit of no less than 10 precincts at random choosing by the GEC.


Perez tells KUAM News that the request comes not at the conduct of the election but rather the security and testing of the equipment. He says the scanners from the GEC's three new tabulation machines from longtime vendor Election Systems & Software have been under question in jurisdictions where they are used. Perez adds those jurisdictions have also required manual audits of the election.


Perez tells KUAM that he's been involved in every gubernatorial election since the island first had an elected governor in the 1970s and he's never seen a margin won by a gubernatorial candidate like last week's Super Tuesday results.


And while she couldn't comment on the matter until all commissioners were in receipt of the letter, earlier this morning GEC executive director Maria Pangelinan spoke with KUAM on questions about the results and equipment. "We believe the machines were perfectly fine on Election Day," she stated. "We went through the ritual, we went through the test election on Sunday. When we found the problems, we went through it thoroughly. So I'm pretty confident about the machines, so if people have questions, let's bring those questions up and see how we deal with them."


The GEC conducted a test election on the Sunday before the election where the machines where the results were not consistent possibly due to the transport of machines and change of temperature. A follow-up test election was conducted the following day where the results were reading accurately. Both parties were present at the test election, including Perez. "You got to remember there was 36 hours that those machines were idle at UOG and according to testing that was done at the University of Pennsylvania by other testing groups in the United States - it takes three minutes to reprogram the machine," he said.


Perez added, "We did but because this is our basic concern my basic concern was the gubernatorial campaign you got to remember that the democrats took the majority in the legislature a pretty good majority and almost the super majority I have been involved in every gubernatorial election since the elected governor law was signed and I have never seen an election where the opposing party won but a good majority in the legislature and the gubernatorial was won by the opposite party."


Perez tells KUAM that the testing of machines prior to an election in California for example requires a test of 10,000 ballots whereas the GEC's test was only for 116 ballots. And while a test election was conducted during the Primary Election, Perez says there actually no reason to request for a manual audit then because they were going into the general election.


Political analyst Ron McNinch in the meantime says he was surprised by the final outcome for the governor's race, but says there's absolutely no need for a recount, "In general, no, not when you don't make it any precinct, not when you lose in every village, it's pretty clear. It's obvious from the results that some democrats didn't vote for Gutierrez, in fact they probably crossed-over, they did cross-over."


According to the unofficial results, Calvo-Tenorio received over 63% of the vote or more than 9,700 votes compared to Gutierrez-Gumataotao. Calvo-Tenorio also won every single one of the 58 village precincts. As for how the Republicans feel, Republican Party of Guam chairman Mike Benito tells KUAM it's "disappointing that he [Perez] just doesn't see the loss for what it is. This was a mandate by the people, but they don't want to let it go. If the GEC sees it fit to do so, then we'll respect that, but at this point it would seem somewhat of a frivolous claim."