Yoshina said some minor glitches turned up throughout the day, but added they were all dealt with to his satisfaction.

"We had the usual election stuff that happens and as soon as we found out about them we took care of them," he said. "All in all I think it was a darn good election."

Turnout, at 66.7 percent of eligible voters, or 431,638 people, was the highest since 1998, and reversed a three-decade trend of declining voter turnout in presidential elections.

One of the biggest problems Tuesday occurred at a precinct in Mililani, where 99 voters were given the wrong ballot. Instead of the race for incumbent Marilyn Lee's seat, the ballot contained the race for Wahiawa Rep. Marcus Oshiro's seat.

Yoshina said there was a misprint in the ballots and the precinct chairperson placed the bad ballots in an "emergency bin" to be looked at later. He said the chair probably should have notified election control, but said no procedures were violated.

Yoshina said the races that were not affected by the misprint, but he said the state House votes were declared void. Regardless, he said, the contests were not affected by the spoiled ballots.

"We don't like to see that. But as bad as it is, it happens because we print a lot of ballots and it just gets printed wrong."

Lingle said Yoshina has made many mistakes during the last two elections and perhaps the Office of Elections should be moved back under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant governor's office, who ran elections until changes were introduced by the Legislature in 1995.

The changes took place to remove the possibility of a perceived conflict of interest from having an elected official administer the elections, according to lawmakers at the time.

The chief elections officer is selected by a five-member Elections Appointment and Review Panel appointment by the governor and serves a four-year term.

Lingle said bringing the office back to the lieutenant governor's office would mean that an elected official would be held accountable for any problems.

Yoshina, who was reappointed in September 2003, was harshly criticized in 1998 after it was learned that seven electronic ballot-counting machines malfunctioned, prompting an unprecedented recount of the general election. The recount confirmed the original outcomes.

The 1998 elections were the first in which Hawai'i used optical-scanning vote counters, replacing the punch-card system.

Kitty Lagareta was a member of the review panel looking into Yoshina's job performance until she was named to the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents by Lingle.

Lagareta also worked as an election observer for the Republican Party on Tuesday and was very critical of the use of electronic voting machines in the polling precincts. She also cited ballots being sent to the wrong district, and the late-night discovery of 4,000 absentee ballots.

Lagareta said moving the elections office back to lieutenant governor might be a good idea because it could allow for a more open review process of Yoshina's job performance, but she said she has never asked that Yoshina be removed from his job.

"I'm not calling for anything with Dwayne," Lagareta said. "But I am beginning to lose faith in his ability to plan and his ability to get the legislature to do some things it needs to do to make our election process more effective."

Former governor Ben Cayetano, who signed the law moving the elections office, said the election was not poorly handled and the Republicans really want Yoshina out.

Yoshina yesterday declined to comment on the criticism of him by Republican Party officials.

Yoshina said the 4,000 absentee ballots came as no surprise because there always is a late pickup at post offices on election day. If anything, he said, "this one was a little different in the sense that we had a lot more of the heavy absentee use."