By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

THE Association of Commonwealth Teachers may hold another election of officers — the third this school year.
ACT’s election committee chairwoman, Kagman Elementary School teacher Angela Wheat, yesterday said some officers have raised concerns or contested the rules adopted for the election held on Feb. 27-28.
ACT extended the election for another week to give schools ample time to return their ballots.
The association was supposed to announce the winners yesterday, but according to Wheat, “we haven’t counted the ballots yet because some schools don’t have representatives and it is taking us a little longer to collect them all. And now, some officers are questioning the election rules so we will have decide if we will hold another election.”
Wheat said it was their outgoing president James Yangetmai and vice president Jaime Vergara who questioned the processes which she said were agreed to and voted on by committee members.
“There are some concerns about violations of the election bylaws that some say are in conflict with our policy, but we tried to meet those standards and our president told us to go on with it,” she explained.
Yangetmai declined to comment, and Variety was unable to contact Vergara.
The election committee did not disclose the names of the candidates until the day of the election.
They were not given the required one-month to campaign and voters had to write the names of the candidates of their choice.
“Yes we disclosed the names of the candidates only on election day because I had difficulty getting verification from eight candidates and I felt it was not right to publish their names without their confirmation,” Wheat said.
The ballots should have been numbered but Wheat said this would have been expensive.
“We will push through with the counting but if the body decides to call for another election I will not be the election committee chairwoman because I have already gone through the process,” she said. “Though there may be some questions about the process, we should let this election stand…and honor the people who voted. What’s important here was we made sure that they only voted one time,” she said.
“The president asked me to take this position and …I took it and considered things seriously.”