Investigate ballot bungle

Legislators and other officials must take the reins following the election-day train wreck — an apt description when voters are kept waiting at the polls for hours, without good reason — and make sure reforms occur to prevent that from happening again.

Now that the dust has settled from the upheaval of the week, it’s clear that the ballot shortage fiasco at two dozen Oahu precincts did some serious damage to voter trust, which has been in short supply already. Hawaii has occupied the bottom rung on the voter-turnout ladder, and the Nov. 6 election did little to propel the state upward. A serious inquiry into what happened and what could be improved needs to happen before the issue becomes subsumed in other lawmaking concerns when the Legislature convenes.

To recap: A total of 70 polling places on Oahu reported running low on paper ballots over the course of the day, running short or running out of paper ballots and hundreds of frustrated voters waiting hours to vote. Many ended up fine or were replenished, but at 24 polling places on the island, ballots ran out during normal voting hours (one on Kauai and two on Hawaii island also ran out). This meant keeping stations open for hours past closing time, delaying returns.

An untold number of voters gave up and went home; others either waited for paper ballots or queued for the use of the electronic voting booth (most stations only had one).

There were other complications. One was the confusion over assignments to polling places that often comes on reapportionment years, when district lines were redrawn. And this year, the Office of Elections decided to fulfill a request to gather data on how many ballots came in on Election Day as opposed to absentee ballots. This meant each precinct’s ballots were segregated and were not interchangeable with those at other polling places, and that meant they couldn’t be shared to offset shortages within the district. This was not the year for such a research project.

At the end of a rancorous election in which a construction interest group called Pacific Resource Partnership pounded away against mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano, it didn’t help that many of the trouble spots happened to be precincts where the former governor had polled well in the primary election. There is certainly no evidence that this was anything more than coincidental, but conspiracy theories often erupt amid frustration. People have grumbled that it was done to game the election. Even with such a conclusion being unfounded, the circumstances were not helpful to any drive for improved voter engagement.

The reason for the shortage given by Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago was a faulty formula used to estimate the number of ballots needed at the precincts. He has not clearly explained why there can’t be a full allotment of ballots for registered voters at each precinct. But in any case, it seems to be standard practice in many jurisdictions for estimates to be made and for reserve ballots to be kept separately.

The real problem was that the office wasn’t prepared to handle the flood of requests for more ballots. In several cases it took hours after repeated shortage alerts went out for the extras to be delivered. On an island this small, that shouldn’t have happened.

Protocols in various states may not be entirely comparable, but practices elsewhere may provide some ideas. For example, the California Elections Code makes allowances for alternative procedures to be put in place, before the election, for when ballots run out. Among them: equipping polling places with the ability to print on demand — even permitting ballot blanks to be photocopied and then certified with an official stamp or seal.

These are the ideas that the state Elections Commission members should consider when they get debriefed on what happens in the coming days. A legislative hearing on the problems could shed further light, suggesting what steps to take to bolster what is clearly a shaky, unprofessional elections operation.

Hawaii voters deserve far better than this.