Guam - Many in the community have been wondering exactly why, in this age of high technology, the Guam Election Commission was forced to hand-count the ballots from yesterday's special election.  Agency executive director John Blas speculated on the lingering issue of why exactly his team wasn't able to use the automated tabulation devices produced by Electronic Systems & Software, forcing them to go old school.

"There is currently a billing dispute between myself and the vendor," he stated. "It's not something that I will push aside.  I wanted to complete this election process, so that's why we did the manual tabulation process.  But come first thing Monday, I'm going to communicate back with our vendor because moving forward I don't ever want the Guam Election Commission to default on any payments where services have been rendered.

"So we'll look at that and come to some sort of agreement and then move forward from there."