Voter turnout was
second lowest in
Hawaii history

By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

Despite hot ballot issues, the voter turnout Tuesday was the second lowest percentage of participation in Hawaii history. And there was no excuse like the Nov. 5, 1996, rainstorm blamed for the worst general election turnout.

The 412,517 people who went to the polls comprised 68.6 percent of the registered voters in the state. Two years ago, the turnout was 67.9 percent.

There were 100,163 Hawaiians registered to vote in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs races. The turnout of 64,806 represented 64.7 percent of eligible voters.

There's now a record high number of registered voters in Hawaii, 601,404, or more than 56,000 over the 1996 general election.

But the list includes as many as 50,000 names of people who have left the state or even died, said City Clerk Genny Wong.

With that many redundant names on the rolls, the turnout percentage was skewed, said Jess Yescalis, executive director of the state Republican Party.

The problem of bloated voter rolls is a result of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, Wong explained. The act, nicknamed the "motor voter law," made it easier for voters to register -- by mail, and with driver license applications -- but also made it harder for government agencies to purge names of registered voters.

"We would purge you if you failed to vote," said Wong. "If you voted in either the primary or the general election, you were kept on rolls.

"Now, they say, only after two election cycles and we still have to do a follow-up mailing. So this year we mailed out to those who missed the 1994 and 1996 elections. We will put them on inactive status."

Wong said: "We don't want to disenfranchise anyone. We have been grappling with it, familiarizing ourselves on how other states are handling it."

Yescalis said: "The turnout number is low not because less people were voting but because there are too many names on the list. It creates turmoil that even when people move or pass away, they cannot be taken off the rolls."

With the invalid names deleted, the turnout would be closer to 73 percent.

Yescalis said the numbers show "the best performance for the Republican Party in 30 years."

The GOP official said negative advertising in the last days had the result of "scaring people into staying at home. The airwaves were inundated with a harsh message ... It probably diminished turnout from those who were undecided, people who were not convinced of what they wanted," Yescalis said.

"I thought the turnout was not bad when you compare it nationally," said Gerald Kato of the University of Hawaii journalism department. "... The Democrats were good about getting voters out. And Lingle did a good job in getting people interested, showing there was some intensity."

Kato said the choices voters made on the Constitution and City Charter questions "tells that there wasn't as much confusion as I expected.

"If you look at the pattern, it seems that people were choosing in some more thoughtful manner than voting all yes or all no. They voted for the constitutional amendment, and they voted against the Con Con. In the charter amendments, it is telling that they defeated one of them."

"On the same-sex thing, I thought there would be a lot more blank votes," Kato said. "It seemed voters were clear on what the issue was. If there was confusion, I would think there would be a lot more blank ballots."

Blank ballots on the question about permitting the Legislature to limit marriage to one man and one woman totaled just 2 percent.

Some 70,345 people voted in advance by absentee ballot.

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Ballot re-marking
dispute is settled,
elections officer says

By Rod Ohira
Star-Bulletin

Unless there's a challenge by a candidate, a dispute concerning the state's policy of re-marking some absentee ballots to make them acceptable for computer reading appears to be over.

"As far as we're concerned, it was a non-issue," elections official Scott Fujimori said. "We had procedures in place to deal with it."

The dispute surfaced early yesterday in the absentee-ballot processing area when an elections observer noticed a worker stamping over an erasure mark on a ballot.

A handful of observers challenged the validity of the process, noting that double-marked ballots filed as over votes would not be counted.

But officials argued safeguards in the system would have caught such an error.

"The machine would have caught it and observers can review ballots that are kicked out," Fujimori said. "And the control center would have caught it."

Fujimori added the state did not instruct workers to mark over erasures.

"Sometimes people don't listen to instructions," he said. "That may have happened but the re-mark numbers were few and far between."

About 1,500 absentee ballots were in the batch being processed at midnight.