In working order
POSTED: Sunday, May 09, 2010
So far, roughly one in five ballots mailed out for the special election for Congress has been cast, according to state Office of Elections.
About 60,000 out of 317,000 registered voters in the district had returned their ballots as of Wednesday, officials said yesterday during a check of the machines that will do the counting on May 22, the final day to receive ballots in the mail-in special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie in the 1st Congressional District.
The 12 electronic voting machines, three high-speed scanners and three computers that will read the ballots, as well as printers that will print out results, were tested at the State Capitol.
The electronic voting machines will be put to use tomorrow when walk-in voting begins at Honolulu Hale.
Dave Harris, an official observer and an electrical engineer at the University of Hawaii, said observers manually counted one more ballot than the machine during the testing. But upon checking their results, observers discovered they had counted an extra blank ballot in the test stack, Harris said.
VOTER INFORMATIONThe 1st Congressional District runs roughly from East Honolulu to parts of Mililani and Ewa.
The election is being held by mail and no polling places will be open on election day.
Ballots were mailed to registered voters on April 30 and must be received no later than 6 p.m. May 22.
Those who prefer to vote in person may do so at Honolulu Hale between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. tomorrow through May 20.
Ballots may also be delivered to a drop box in front of the State Capitol on South Beretania Street by the Father Damien Statue or at the Office of Elections at 802 Lehua Ave. in Pearl City by 6 p.m. May 22.
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“;The machine was right, the count by hand was wrong,”; he said.
State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and Ed Case, both Democrats, and Republican City Councilman Charles Djou are the top contenders vying for the seat.
The winner-take-all race has received national attention because of the possibility that the two Democrats may split the vote, allowing Djou to win a traditionally Democratic seat in the home state of Democratic President Barack Obama.
The winner of the special election will serve until the winner of the general election in November takes office.
Should the election be won by a small margin, “;we don't wait till a candidate disputes the results; we manually count the ballots,”; Harris said.
The Kodak i660, a high-speed scanner, reads 3,000 to 3,500 ballots an hour, said a representative of Hart InterCivic, the Austin, Texas,-based company that was awarded the $389,000 contract to providing about 350,000 ballots, envelopes, electronic voting machines and computers. The special election is costing the state about $920,000.
