Governor criticizes Office of Elections over primary

The performance of the state Office of Elections is getting progressively worse and could make residents lose faith in the integrity of the system, Gov. Linda Lingle said yesterday.

And she can't understand why a state such as California with 15 million voters is capable of announcing election results by 11 p.m. while Hawaii elections officials, who deal with much smaller numbers, wait until the next day to give the final tallies.

"I have observed several statewide elections now fairly close up and I think they have gotten worse with each succeeding election," Lingle said in response to questions during a news conference yesterday.

"This is a very bad sign -- it makes people lose confidence in the integrity of the voting system," Lingle said.

Elections officials did not respond to calls for comment on Lingle's charges.

The state elections office did not release a final calculation of who won the Saturday primary elections until Sunday afternoon.

Lingle called for the state Legislature to hold hearings into the problems in the elections office.

"I think this is something the Legislature needs to hold hearings on because this is not a difficult issue," Lingle said. "The situation has deteriorated over time. When you have an office that has only one function and that is to hold elections every two years, we shouldn't have this many problems with a state this size."

State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, judiciary committee chairwoman, who had previously criticized the elections office headed by Dwayne Yoshina, said she would consider a new round of hearings next year. Yoshina is hired by a bipartisan, semiautonomous elections board.

"I have always been a critic of the elections process and I believe that everyone must know that their vote counts," Hanabusa said. "But there is still a question of whether having confidence in the process eliminates the media getting quick election returns."

Elections officials have previously said that they were unable to fill all the positions for precinct workers and other elections officials needed to run the elections this year.

Some precinct chairs had only a hour of training and were put on the job with just one or two days' notice, officials had said.

Lingle, however, rejected the claims of a worker shortage.

"What I am more interested in is what steps they (elections office) took to go out and get people. ... Did they go to the Rotary Clubs and other organizations? Did they approach teachers and ask if they would be willing? Did they go to the university professors union and the police union and other labor unions? What sort of outreach did they do?" Lingle asked.

"Sure it is a challenge, but you have two years, so there shouldn't be this last-minute scrambling going on. And if this is an ongoing problem, the Legislature needs to investigate why this occurs," Lingle said.