Primary Election Runs Into Problems
Some Errors Caused By Electronic System

POSTED: 4:31 pm HST September 24, 2004
HONOLULU New electronic paperless voting machines caused some problems in Saturday's primary election, KITV 4 News reported.

The machines mistakenly allowed voters on Oahu and the Big Island to Green Party ballots even though there were no Green Party candidates. Elections officials also undercounted voter turnout by about 4,000 people.

Elections officials said they made a mistake in calculating the primary turnout totals, but the results of individual races did not change. State elections officials have revised their primary election turnout figures upward. They now say 252,630 people voted in Saturday's election. Their preliminary count was 4,000 votes fewer than that.

For the first time, there were two election-counting vendors this year. One company counted the paper ballots and another company tallied electronic votes on computers used mostly by those with disabilities. The companies counted turnout differently, resulting in the discrepancy.

"We found this and we made proper adjustments," elections spokesman Rex Quidilla said. "These are routine corrections after each election."

A second problem was that the electronic voting machines recorded 22 Green Party ballots on Oahu and the Big Island, but there were no Green Party candidates on those islands.

KITV 4 News brought that to the attention of Hawaii County Clerk Al Konishi.

"I am definitely going to take a look at this and start asking questions and probably questions you've already asked, but now, it's my turn and when I ask, they'll have some official weight to them," Konishi said.

State elections officials said the computerized voting machines provided by Hart Intercivic allowed voters to "click on" a political party, even though there weren't any candidates running from that party on their island.

So a couple of dozen Green Party ballots were recorded, even though there were no candidates.

"We brought that up to the vendor already. They will change that for the next election," Quidilla said.