VOTING

New ballots
create snarls

Candidates in close races
call for recount, despite the fact
that Hawaii law doesn't
allow for it

By Craig Gima
Star-Bulletin

At least four candidates who lost close elections in the Democratic primary are considering going to court to get the ballots recounted.

"That sucks," said Alex Sonson, who lost by just nine votes to incumbent Rep. Roy Takumi (D, Pearl City-Waipahu).

"I was expecting a lot more absentee ballots," said Sonson. "I think we have to count again."

But Hawaii law does not allow candidates to request a recount.

Chief elections officer Dwayne Yoshina interprets the law to mean that there will be no recounts unless the candidate, a qualified political party, or any 30 voters in an election district, file a complaint with the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Complaints must be filed within six days after the primary.

Yoshina said no candidate has ever taken that step.

He said once the counting process and the checks and balances are explained, the candidate usually drops the request for a recount.

Losing candidates, however, say confusion over the new election system raises questions about Saturday's results.

Gerald Hagino, who lost to Sen. Robert Bunda (D, Wahiawa) by 15 votes, said he is looking for a recount.

"It was so close, and some people mentioned they had problems with the voting machines," he said.

Audrey Hidano, who lost to Sen. Rod Tam (D, Nuuanu) by 29 votes, said she knows of a supporter who gave up voting because the ballot scanner repeatedly failed to accept his ballot.

Maui Councilwoman Alice Lee questioned what she called "unusual circumstances" in her 90-vote loss to James "Kimo" Apana in the Maui mayoral primary.

This election was the first using a new optical scanning system to count votes instead of the old punch card system. The $1.7 million contract with Elections Systems & Software is supposed to save the state about $1 million in the primary, mainly because of the cheaper cost of printing a single-page ballot rather than multiple punch cards.

It was also supposed to provide quicker election-night returns.

But the color-coded ballot also created confusion among some voters.

Hawaii allows voting for only a single party during the primary election. The ballots of those voting in more than one party's primary were invalidated.

Of the 46,982 absentee ballots received, 2,330 ballots were invalidated because of multiparty voting, about 5 percent. That compares to 976 ballots out of 37,695 absentees (about 2.6 percent) invalidated during the last primary in 1996.

Even on primary election day, when people fed their ballots through a scanner to detect errors, 5,691 ballots out of the 244,870 ballots cast at precincts were not valid because of multi-party voting.

There were also problems at some precincts where poll workers did not know how to properly operate the scanners and new ballot boxes.

The recounting of those precincts on Oahu and the Big Island, and a software glitch on Maui caused delays in the reporting of returns throughout election night.

The other big problem with Saturday's count was that absentee ballots were sent out with instructions to mark the ballots with black pen.

But the counters could not detect ink from ballpoint pens -- only pencils and ink pens like the Sharpie brand soft-tip pens that use ink with a high graphite content.

The counters spit out the ballots marked with ballpoint ink. Those ballots were manually re-marked with a stamp on Saturday night and re-fed into the machines -- a process that went on until nearly midnight.

The final statewide printout was released just before sunrise at 6:15 a.m. yesterday.

In addition, about four or five mail-in ballots came in where voters returned just the cutout portions of the ballots they had voted on. Those ballots were invalidated and not counted.

An unknown number of other ballots were invalidated because the affidavit with the ballot was not signed.

There were three Republican ballots found through manual counts with only marginal marks on them. Those ballots were set aside after it was determined they would not affect the outcome of the major races.

The debut of the new system was "not as good as we'd hoped," said Tom Eschberger, vice president of Elections Systems & Software.

For the Nov. 3 general election, Eschberger said his company will bring in more counters and make some changes to prevent some of the problems that occurred Saturday.

He also said the ballot-holding envelope, which is fed into the scanner at precincts, will be changed to make feeding easier.

Yoshina agreed that it was a "challenging election."

He said, however, that he talked to a clerk who worked the election night when the state switched to punch card ballots 26 years ago. The clerk told him there were similar complaints then.

Gov. Ben Cayetano gave the new system a "C" grade. He said he was concerned about reports that voters did not complete their ballots because they didn't understand the new process.

Cayetano had his ballot rejected at first because he pushed the ballot holder too hard into the scanner at his precinct.

"It seems as though you need a feather touch," he said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle visited the election center and said while she believes the new system is better than the old one, she does not think it should have been put into place just 90 days before the election.

Yoshina said he will be double-checking results on the neighbor islands and evaluating the new system this week.

He said there will probably be more training for workers and that absentee voters will be instructed to use a pencil to mark ballots.

Yoshina and election observers said despite the problems, the vote count was accurate and secure.

"The old system had to go. It was creaky," said Larry Meacham, an election observer and the executive director of Common Cause Hawaii.

"I think it can work. I think it's a new system, but I think it needs a lot of fine-tuning," said Russell Mokulehua, chairman of the election observers. "I don't think we have to be concerned about the accuracy of the machine."

Donna Alcantara, chairwoman of the Republican Party, said the party sent a letter to Yoshina on Friday asking him to reconsider his interpretation of the law regarding the recounting of ballots.

The party was concerned about the new system and wanted to document problems in case it became necessary to ask for a recount.

"I think in a couple of them (close Democratic races), I would (ask for a recount)," she said. "However in our races, I don't see a problem with them right now."