GOV. Eddie Calvo is going to ensure the Guam Election Commission will be able to pay off its $74,000 debt to off-island vendor Nebraska Election Systems and Software.
“I’ll get with our fiscal team, sit down with Maria Pangelinan to see what we can do to assist, and find out whether it’s just about releasing allotments or if there’s a shortfall in the appropriations. Hopefully it can be done administratively. It’s important to get this election process moving along,” the governor said.
The GEC board was thrown a curveball Monday night during a reconvened meeting after learning the agency was $74,000 in the hole for services to Nebraska Election Systems and Software that dates back to the 2008 elections.
Pangelinan said the amount due reached up to $140,000 but after reconciling their books, they came up with the current amount.
She explained that before the 2010 election, GEC had written a letter to the vendor, promising they would make payment. But to date, nothing has been done. The GEC executive director in 2008 up until last year was John Blas.
“In 2011, the company offered credit on the equipment we weren’t using. Unfortunately, back in March, we were told that they have to cancel the credit and that we still owe $74,000,” Pangelinan said.
To make matters worse, Pangelinan said the current law only allows them to make payments that were appropriated in Fiscal Year 2012.
She further stated the cancellation is not only for the ballot tabulation machines but also for more blank ballots. GEC is currently short on ballot stock and doesn’t even have enough for the primary elections.
GEC does have enough ballots for the UOCAVA registered voters. Those ballots have been printed and were sent out yesterday.
Comments
It seems like every day there is a major crisis from mismanagement at the Guam Election Comission.
A 5th grader has enuff common sense to make sure you have the equiptment and supplies on hand to operate your agency.
I cannot recall all the screw ups at this agency in the past 2-3 years, but perhaps other posters can help, my Alzheimers is acting up.
They have 2 years to prepare for a 1 day event and screw that up BIG TIME ?
Perhaps the MV staff can post what has gone crazy at the GEC in the last 2-4 elections. I mean folks, we are not some third world dictatorship here are we ?.
..What if we held an election and no one voted because we had no paper ?
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Hast[censored]
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