Guam Supreme Court Chief Justice
Katherine A. Maraman
An order signed by Guam Supreme Court Chief Justice Katherine A. Maraman and Associate Justices F. Philip Carbullido and Robert J. Torres orders the Guam Bar Association to hold a new election for its officers prior to its August 25, 2017 annual meeting. The court also ordered that the officers elected in the new voting serve until the Bar's regularly scheduled 2019 annual meeting.
The 'supervisory' order from the court, which created and oversees the Bar Association was addressed to Jehan'ad G.Martinez, the current President of the Guam Bar Association and its Board of Governors.
The order cites a number of irregularities in last November's balloting that came to light while it was in progress, in violation of the organization's bylaws.
"Most notably," the order reads, "the ballots did not allow for voter anonymity because the mailings excluded an extra envelope that would have stripped away the voters' immediately identifiable information before the ballots were set aside for counting."
The Bar's Board of Governors attempted to fix the problem by extending the balloting into January and allowing voting by facsimile for voters not concerned with their anonymity. Various violations of bylaws were noted and after the election, the Bar's elections committee "determined that there were 71 ballots deemed spoiled because the ballot or surrounding areas lacked a signature, had an undecipherable signature, or had some other unqualified defect."