Posted on: Monday, September 20, 2004

Glitches caused by human errors

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Fourteen people were given the wrong ballots and cast votes in the wrong state House district race during Saturday's primary.

Dwayne Yoshina, the state's chief elections officer, said volunteer workers mistakenly delivered the wrong electronic voter machine to a precinct in the neighboring House district.

The 14 votes in that race were thrown out, Yoshina said, but that did not affect the outcome of the race.

"There's no change in the outcome of the election," he said. "But it's not something you like to do so it's of concern to us."

Also during the primary:

• The data files from the electronic voting devices in six of the 335 precincts statewide were mistakenly left at their respective sites, delaying final vote totals.

• The number of spoiled "paper" ballots almost tripled from the primary two years ago, raising concern among political observers.

The 14 wrong votes were cast at International Baptist Church, a precinct in the 27th House District covering Liliha and Pu'unui. The votes were cast mistakenly for the race in the 26th District that takes in Punchbowl, Pacific Heights and Nu'uanu Valley.

Yoshina said workers delivered two electronic voting machines to the church, including one that was supposed to go to Pauoa Elementary School.

The wrong machine was used, Yoshina said, until the mistake was discovered. The school did not receive an electronic voting machine until later but voters could, as elsewhere, use the standard optical scanning voter machines that have been used in the past four election cycles.

Because the two precincts share all the other races, the other votes from those 14 ballots were counted, Yoshina said.

He stressed that the glitches with the new electronic machines were the result of human error and not the technology.

Around 9 p.m. Saturday, elections officials realized that the data files from four electronic voting machines on O'ahu and two on the Big Island were left by precinct officials at their respective polling places. As a result, tallying of the election's final results was delayed until 1 p.m. yesterday.

"We're looking at the reasons," Yoshina said. "If it's a training issue, we'll do more training."

The six electronic voting machines involved 51 votes. They were designed for disabled people or those who have trouble reading English but can be used by anyone. Only 6,541 of the 248,683 ballots cast, about 2.6 percent, used the new machines.

The new machines were criticized by those concerned that they do not allow for a "paper trail" to track possible abuses.

The old optical scan voting system also raised concerns yesterday from people worried about the many spoiled ballots, a majority of which came from those who selected candidates from several political parties or color codings when voters are required to choose from only one.

Final results show 9,559 ballots were invalidated, according to Todd Belt, a political science professor at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. In the 2002 primary, 3,517 ballots were disqualified.

Since voting machines at the precincts are supposed to reject "overvote" ballots, some observers believe the increase in spoiled ballots come from mail-in absentee ballots that, because they are secret, cannot be returned to the voter. But Belt said the increase in the number of spoiled ballots appeared to come from both absentee and primary-day ballots.

Elections officials said so many spoiled ballots were rejected as invalid at one precinct on Saturday that they ran out of ballots momentarily and had to track down more.

Belt called for the state to provide "better education and labeling." Richard Port, a former Democratic Party official and an elections observer in Honolulu, also urged improvements.

Gov. Linda Lingle said she was also concerned about the higher number of spoiled ballots.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.