Despite fears of voter confusion over a new ballot design, the number of ballots spoiled in Saturday's primary because voters chose candidates from more than one political party was a record low.

The state Office of Elections reported that just 257 ballots — 89 at the precinct level and 168 absentee ballots — were spoiled because of multiparty voting, out of 246,220 ballots cast. The number was minuscule considering that 5,231 ballots were invalidated by multiparty voting in the 2006 primary and 9,561 ballots were ruined in the 2004 primary.

"It demonstrates that our efforts to count as many ballots as possible are showing and that we're making significant progress," said Kevin Cronin, the state's chief elections officer. "It's dramatic."

Bart Dame, a Democratic activist and election observer who had concerns about the ballot design, said he wanted to see a detailed review to make sure the results did not disguise any flaws. But he otherwise praised elections officials.

"There is no question that there was a great improvement over the past," Dame said.

Hawai'i is an open primary state, and voters are allowed to choose candidates from any political party without prior registration for that party. But once voters make their party choice, they have to stick with the same party for all partisan races down the ballot or their votes are spoiled.

The new ballot design required voters for the first time to fill out a box selecting their political party. Over the past decade, ballots had separated the political parties by color code and — before 1998 — voters could pull separate ballots for each political party.

Both major political parties complained in August that Cronin rushed the new ballots to the printer without allowing party review to check for errors or design flaws.

Several Democrats also warned that the new requirement to select a political party could lead to widespread voter confusion. Specifically, Democrats feared that voters who consider themselves independents would mistakenly fill out the Independent Party box and then spoil their ballots by voting for Democratic candidates.

The new Hart InterCivic voting machines were programmed to flag such errors in ballots cast at precincts, but Democrats worried that with a growing number of voters casting absentee ballots by mail, there would be no way to correct the errors and a significant number of absentee ballots would be spoiled.

A legal challenge to Hart's contract reduced the amount of time for precinct worker training and voter education before the primary. But elections officials did produce voter education pamphlets and had voter information booths at polling places.

"If this data is correct, then it appears to be a significant improvement," said Brian Schatz, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawai'i.

AN ENCOURAGING SIGN

The low spoilage rate from multiparty voting is encouraging for Cronin and his staff. Cronin, who took over the job in February, has been blasted for his handling of the Hart contract, filing deadline challenges and ballot design.

An administrative hearings officer ruled in August that the Office of Elections acted in bad faith when it awarded the voting machines contract to Hart over Election Systems & Software, which had a much lower bid. The hearings officer allowed the contract to proceed for the primary and November general election but canceled it at the end of the year. The state is appealing the ruling.

A separate legal challenge from Maui activists alleges the state failed to adopt proper administrative rules for the new voting machines, and risks the security of the vote tally by transmitting Neighbor Island results to Honolulu by telephone lines.

Although there were anecdotal reports about voter confusion on Saturday and several complaints about the ballot design on blog sites and talk radio, it appears — if the Office of Elections reported the results accurately — that the voting machines worked properly and elections officials caught most voter errors.

The voting machines are supposed to recognize ballots with errors, giving voters another chance to fill out ballots correctly or consult with precinct workers. Voters can still cast their ballots with the errors, however.

The Office of Elections also assigned two teams to sort through an estimated 1,000 absentee ballots in which voters failed to select a party. Cronin said staff examined the individual absentee ballots and counted the ones where it was apparent the voter favored one party.

PROOF IN THE RESULTS

Rex Quidilla, of the Office of Elections, said voters who picked a party had their votes for that party's candidates counted at precincts even if they tried to cross over and vote for another party's candidates in certain races. He also said that votes cast in nonpartisan races — such as the mayoral campaigns — were counted even when voters spoiled their ballots in partisan races.

Quidilla believes the results show the new process worked.

"The disconnect was that people didn't understand that they were really selecting first a party and then its slate of candidates," he said of past voting errors. "I think some of the confusion out there is that some of the people don't understand the purpose of a single-party primary, so people were voting their favorites from various parties."

Quidilla said the new requirement to select a party may have helped some voters better understand the primary. "It really forced the issue for voters to recognize that a voter had to select a party first, and that wasn't so explicit in the prior system," he said.