By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

FILIPINO voters on Guam beat the last day of absentee voting yesterday, the same day that regular elections were held in the Philippines, where the electorate cast votes for more than 17,000 candidates for various positions nationwide.
As of press time, board canvassers at the Philippine Consulate were opening the ballots, simultaneous with the counting of votes in the home country.
Vice Consul Kerwin Tate said a number of Filipino absentee voters came to the consulate office at the ITC building in Tamuning for a last-minute filing of their ballots.
Tate, however, could not tell the voter turnout as of press time. There are 600 Filipinos certified by the Philippine Commission on Election to be eligible to participate in the voting process under the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003.
Tate said a number of voters with misplaced mails managed to retrieve their election packages that were lost in the postal system.
Positions at stake in the midterm elections are those for 12 senators, 230 members of the House of Representatives including party-list representatives, hundreds of governors, vice governors, provincial board members, mayors, vice mayors and councilors. Absentee voters are allowed only to cast votes for senators and party-list representatives.