Vote counting went 'quite well' for primary

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hundreds of Hawai'i voters showed up at wrong precincts. An automatic letter opener inadvertently shredded about 800 absentee ballots on O'ahu, but they were duplicated so they could be counted properly. A Kaua'i resident is certain she voted a ballot from the wrong district on primary election day, but elections officials say they have found no evidence to support her contention.

Despite the complaints, elections officials said the election counting on primary election night went quite well, after a difficult day in which hundreds of voters showed up at wrong precincts.

State elections chief Dwayne Yoshina late yesterday certified the election results in all races except that for the Democratic U.S. House of Representatives 2nd district seat. Certification for that race, between Patsy Mink and Steve Tataii, was held up because of a Supreme Court challenge brought by Tataii. But general election deadlines are looming, and printers yesterday began printing ballots for mailing to absentee voters overseas.

"If we didn't send them soon, people like our servicemen overseas couldn't get them back in time," said Rex Quidilla, administrative assistant to state elections chief Yoshina.

The biggest obvious problem during the primary election was one elections officials had feared: Because of reapportionment, many voters had been switched to new precincts, and many of them didn't get the word.

"People couldn't find their polling places, so there were delays," said Honolulu chief elections officer Glen Takahashi.

"It's something that happens after every reapportionment year," Quidilla said. "It's why the yellow cards were so important. It's why we put up the Web site and took out the ads."

Other than that, the heads of Hawai'i's two major political parties said they had few complaints.

Hawai'i Republican Party chief Micah Kane said the GOP had observers well represented at polling places and the counting centers across the state. He said the party has made minor recommendations for changes, but overall felt the election went well.

"I don't have any major concerns at this point. I think we're okay with what we're seeing right now," he said.

Hawai'i Democratic Party chief Lorraine Akiba said her party felt the election had gone well, and she thanked the state's election officials and volunteers for their service.

A familiar, but not common, complaint is from voters who say they ended up with the wrong ballot.

"It happens every year," said Kaua'i chief elections officer Lyndon Yoshioka.

This year, Kapa'a resident Kit Ellison went to vote at the Kapa'a Elementary School precinct. After voting, it occurred to her that she'd voted for her friend, Republican state House candidate JoAnne Georgi. The problem was that Georgi was running in West Kaua'i's 16th District, and Ellison lives in the 14th District.

"I thought it was really thrilling that I was able to vote for her. I noticed her name and I voted," Ellison said. She said the precinct ballot counting machine accepted the ballot, and Ellision went on her way, somewhat distracted by the 4-year-old and 6-year-old she was accompanying.

When she mentioned it to Georgi, who lost the Republican nomination by just 37 votes, Georgi wondered if there might have been enough misplaced ballots to have cost her the election, and asked elections officials to look into it informally.

Yoshioka said the ballot counting machine had been checked by elections officials, and should have rejected the ballot if it was from the wrong district.

"Each ballot type is coded to be read into the precinct counter. We code them to avoid precisely that problem. It would be kicked out of the machine if it had the wrong code," Quidilla said.

It is theoretically possible that a printing error allowed a 16th House district ballot to be read into a 14th district machine, but Yoshioka said he cannot find evidence that this occurred.

An election audit team, which coincidentally included Georgi's husband, Bill, inspected the 80 spoiled ballots that came from the Kapa'a Elementary School precinct, and found all were from the right district. Those were not the voted ballots, but the sample of spoiled ballots should indicate whether there were major problems with improper ballots being used at the precinct, said Bill Georgi, who has experience in computerized auditing.

Bill Georgi said other audit teams hand-checked ballots of two other Kaua'i precincts on election day, and found no ballots that didn't belong — suggesting that there was no widespread problem with ballots in the wrong districts.

The only other thing to do, Quidilla and Yoshioka said, was for Georgi to seek a Hawai'i Supreme Court order to have the sealed Kapa'a Elementary School ballot box unsealed and the ballots checked. Elections officials can't do that without a court order, they said.

But JoAnne Georgi elected not to challenge the election. There does not seem to be sufficient evidence that there were enough errors to have changed the result of her election, she said.