City Council candidate Tommy Waters and a group of supporters from East Honolulu are threatening to file separate court challenges seeking a recount of nearly 40,000 ballots from the Nov. 6 general election, which Waters lost by 22 votes to incumbent Trevor Ozawa.
They say the razor-thin margin in the District 4 race warrants a recount or, short of that, more answers about how late-arriving votes were handled.
Rex Quidilla, city election administrator, said the procedures followed Nov. 6 were the same as in previous elections, with the absentee mail-in ballots that were dropped off by voters on Election Day at Honolulu Hale or any of the Oahu precincts counted last.
Based on the available tallies, it appeared that by the end of Election Day, Waters had won by 72 votes. But the final count, released at 4:12 a.m. Nov. 7, showed Ozawa ahead by 22 votes.
Hawaii Kai community advocate Natalie Iwasa, who lost a primary election runoff in August to represent District 4 on the City Council, threw her support behind Waters during the general election.
“We want to make sure that the process involved was proper and that every vote that should have been counted was counted and counted properly,” she said, adding that the group would be raising the same concerns if the situation had been reversed and their candidate had won by such a slim margin.
A State statute allows either the candidate, the involved political party or any 30 voters from the district to file a complaint with the Hawaii Supreme Court within 20 days after the election, in this case by Nov. 26, if they can show cause, such as fraud or other irregularities, for a recount.
Iwasa pointed out that the law also allows election officials to recount votes at their own discretion.
In 2014 Ozawa beat Waters by 41 votes, and the latter unsuccessfully challenged the outcome in court.
The Office of Elections on Thursday released its latest report on the 2018 results. It showed 39,613 votes cast in District 4, with 18,358 going for Ozawa and 18,336 for Waters. There were 2,909 blank ballots and 10 spoiled votes.
Kuliouou resident Donald Koelper, an East Honolulu regional chairman for the Democratic Party of Hawaii, said the difference in votes could fall within margin of error allowed by the manufacturers of the voting machines used in Hawaii.
“I think it is reasonable considering that there were over 40,000 votes cast in Council District 4 … that a margin of 22 votes deserves a recount,” Koelper said.
Ozawa, meanwhile, said in a statement that he had “full confidence” in the Office of Elections.
Waters, in a letter to state Election Administrator Scott Nago and Honolulu City Clerk Glen Takahashi, raised arguments similar to the voters group.
“My big thing is I can’t find any rule or statute that prescribes what you’re to do with those late absentee ballots,” he said.
Hawaii rules task each county to administer, but not count, absentee ballots, a job reserved for state election staff.
Quidilla said the Oahu absentee mail-in ballots turned in on Election Day were combined with a smaller number of mailed ballots collected by 6 p.m. Altogether there were about 8,000 ballots in the final batch, he said.
As in prior elections, the absentee ballots collected throughout the day were placed in a specially marked red envelope and put into a large container, then dropped off at the state Capitol by state election workers.
The containers were then accepted by the city election staff and taken to the Election Division’s office near the airport, Quidilla said. On Nov. 6 the last batch was accepted by city election officials at around 9 p.m., he said.
From there his staff validated each envelope containing a ballot by checking whether it was from a registered voter, whether a ballot was mailed to the voter and whether the voter may have voted in the ballot booth on Election Day, he said. Officials also verified the voter’s signature.
“Not every envelope received is deemed valid. It has to have the required information, and it has to match what we have for the individual voter,” he said. “The whole point is we treat the voted ballots the same way we did on the first day we received the first absentee mail ballots.”
When that was done, the outer envelopes were removed and the actual ballot envelopes were sorted. The still-sealed envelopes were placed in a cage that state election officials drove back to the Capitol, where they were processed by the state’s vote-counting machines, he said.
The last pickup didn’t happen until after around 12:30 a.m. Nov. 7, he said. The fifth and final vote tally was released several hours later.
