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Election worker
training lagging

The reason is a delay
in signing a contract with
the vote-counting company

By Richard Borreca
Star-Bulletin

Training for the thousands of poll workers in the 334 precincts for this fall's elections has not yet started although the state elections office had planned for it to be under way in May.

Dwayne Yoshina, state chief election officer, said workers have not been trained because of delays in signing a contract with Election Systems & Software, the only company bidding on a contract to count the ballots in the 2000 election.

The contract now is for eight years, or four election cycles. The state had wanted to offer bidders a two-cycle contract, with the option to extend it for another cycle, but Yoshina said ES&S balked, saying it would take a longer time to make money on the state contract.

"They said they had to spread it over a four-cycle period," Yoshina said. The state specifications in the request for proposals for a vote counting system said: "The poll worker trainers will be trained in May 2000 and the other election day officials will be trained in approximately 75 sessions lasting about 2.5 hours per session, over a period extending from June 2000 until September 2000."

Yesterday, Yoshina said the new contract with ES&S should be signed within a week, but because the contract hasn't been signed the training has been pushed back.

"We think we will be able to train the trainers shortly, and we will start the other training soon in July," he said.

Two years ago, seven ES&S vote-counting machines malfunctioned during the general election, leading to what the state auditor called the "most rigorous" vote audit in U.S. history.

After the recount, which found the first tally 99.8 percent accurate, the auditor said because of the change in voting systems installed in 1998 there was a "learning curve."

"Experience with the system is the most important element in running a smooth election," the audit report said in March 1999.

Although training in this system has been delayed, Yoshina said the system offered Hawaii this year has been modified and a panel of 21 precinct officials and election observers gave it high marks.

The system was demonstrated in Honolulu in February and nearly all of those participating declared it good in ease of opening the precincts, closing the precincts, printing internal logs and learning how to use the vote-counting machines.

Yoshina quoted one observer as saying: "This is easier, quicker and less complicated than in 1998."

The state's schedule had called for training to start with the political party workers this month. Democrats said the delay wouldn't cause much of a problem, while the Republicans were more concerned.

"We are still gathering our poll watchers," said Walter Heen, state Democratic Party chairman.

"But we expect there will be enough experienced poll workers, I wouldn't fault the state elections office. There is some lag time involved."

Republicans, however, said they were ready to start training.

"We are ready, we turned in over 800 names for training, we are just waiting to get the information," Micah Kane, GOP executive director said.

Over the years, the number of state poll workers has dropped. In 1994, there were 3,578 poll workers, but two years ago there were just 2,922. Part of that decrease is due to the new automated vote counting system, but the auditor said it is also due to state budget cuts in previous years.

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http://www.hawaii.gov/