Posted on: Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Required recount in close races proposed

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief

Ballots cast in extremely close state and county elections would receive an outright recount, under a proposal approved by a state election reform commission yesterday.

Such a system would have triggered five recounts during the 1998 and 2000 elections, according to statistics supplied by the state Office of Elections.

The nine-member commission wants a new law to require machine recounts in any statewide contest in which the margin of victory is one-eighth of 1 percent or less. The commission proposal also would mandate recounts in other district or county races when the margin of victory is 0.25 percent or less.

The measure also would move the primary election from mid-September to the second Saturday in August, a step that elections officials said is needed to allow adequate time for recounts and court challenges to election results.

If approved, the new law would take effect in 2004.

Lawmakers and others have discussed recount requirements since the 1998 election, when seven of the state's 361 new electronic ballot-counting machines malfunctioned. State lawmakers ordered an unprecedented recount of the general election ballots, but the recount did not alter the outcome of any races.

A 1999 audit found Hawai'i is the only state with no recount requirement, but Chief Election Officer Dwayne Yoshina and other lawmakers have argued the elections process already has ample safeguards built in to ensure accurate counts.

Elections officials manually count samples of ballots to check the accuracy of vote-counting machines; run machine recounts of ballots in the closest races; and take a variety of other steps such as reviewing pollbook records to guarantee accuracy, Yoshina said.

But commission member Annelle Amaral said it is elections officials or observers who decide when to make those checks, and said she wants a recount requirement established in law to boost public confidence in the system.

The bill will be introduced at the Legislature this year. Lawmakers rejected proposals for an outright recount in 2000 and last year because they said adequate vote-counting safeguards are already in place.

If the recount provisions had been in place, it would have produced a recount in 1998 in the race between Rep. Lei Ahu Isa, D-27th (Pu'unui, 'Alewa, Nu'uanu), and Republican Corrine Ching. It also would have brought about recounts in four Kaua'i County Council races in 1998 and 2000.