With five months until the primary election, no consensus has been made regarding legislation to reform the island’s election process. However, the Committee on Election Reform has called a special meeting with hopes to discuss the importance of reforming the island’s election laws and how to move forward from the veto of Bill 413. KUAM News asked Senator Dennis Rodriguez Jr. if every time there’s an election in the future and allegations and irregularities arose, would we change the law, conduct an audit do a recount of the votes. He replied, “Yes, it should be, I think so. I think if there’s a valid complaint, if there’s valid reasons to go back and do an audit or do a recount I think that needs to be done and I think it’s been done in the past.” The chairman for the committee says although there’s an attempt to conduct an override on the vetoed Bill 413, he’s calling for a special meeting to see what needs to be done to further ensure our future elections are carried out “where its transparent and where people are not disenfranchised”. He added, “We have an election in five months and so a lot of the provisions in Bill 413 are good provisions that will facilitate the Guam Election Commission and how they carry out the election, so we need to address that. We just need to move forward and move pass this impasse.”
Governor Eddie Calvo vetoed the bill because of a provision that would require an audit of the 2010 General Election. Calvo has repeatedly said the election was over and criticized Democrats for including the amendment implying it was the work of Calvo’s Democratic gubernatorial opponent and former governor, Carl Gutierrez. Gutierrez responded in a letter Thursday to Calvo, saying he’s made the issue about the two of them rather than about the thousands who were allegedly disenfranchised in the recent election. Calvo’s communications director, Troy Torres, however, fired back that Gutierrez’s letter is just a smoke screen, adding that if the democrats really cared about election reform, they would have started the process back after the botched 1998 election when dead people were voting.
Full Article: Rodriguez wants election reform meeting – KUAM.com-KUAM News: On Air. Online. On Demand..