Posted at 1:13 p.m., Thursday, March 1, 2007
State elections commission names interim chief officer
Advertiser Staff
The state's elections commission this afternoon selected Elections Office spokesman Rex Quidilla to serve as Hawai'i's interim elections chief.Quidilla will hold the post at least until the commission hold its next meeting, which has yet to be scheduled.
The commission also today established a fact-finding committee that will help initiate the process of finding a permanent replacement for Dwayne Yoshina, who has chosen not to seek another four-year term after it became apparent that the state's elections commission would not support him, several sources said yesterday.
Yoshina had been the state's chief elections officer since 1995 when the Legislature made the Office of Elections independent from the lieutenant governor's office.
Gov. Linda Lingle and many of her Republican supporters have been critical of Yoshina's handling of elections for several years, and some Democrats have also questioned whether he had the communications skills to interact with the public on election matters. Yoshina had weathered the criticism and had been reappointed twice by the commission.
