Dysfunctional voting in Hawaii is perennial

Little Hawaii may not have space launches and hurricanes like Florida, but coconut for coconut, I am sure we can match the Sunshine State for dysfunctional voting.

Today there are two big investigations slated for the beleaguered Hawaii state Office of Elections.

In reality, a simple newspaper subscription or access to the Internet is all you need to find out what is wrong with the state of Hawaii’s elections.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who may have pulled out a tad more of his hair trying to deal with the 2012 elections, ordered his attorney general to investigate why many precincts ran out of ballots in the general election.

This comes after he had to issue an emergency proclamation to keep open Hawaii island polling places during the primary election.

And the state Elections Commission, which hires the chief elections officer, this week announced its own investigation into the problems with both the primary election and the general elections foul-ups.

As it stands, the state’s 2012 election cost $3.5 million. Half was paid for by the four counties, with the state picking up the other half.

Many agree things did not go well.

To be fair, things did not go well all the way back to 2008.

Then, much of the blame was heaped on Kevin Cronin, the newly selected chief elections officer. Cronin had some experience as a Wisconsin state bureaucrat, but very little in running elections. As Hawaii chief elections officer, he was soon discovered to not be a registered Hawaii voter, which besides being obvious, was a job requirement.

Cronin resigned in 2009 and Scott Nago, an assistant, was selected as chief elections officer. Nago may have been too quiet and shy to say what he should have said, which was, "No, please, please let me stay in second place."

Before Cronin and Nago, there was Dwayne Yoshina, the career election bureaucrat made famous for unilaterally doing away with the punch ballot voting system and then made infamous for quarreling with so many politicians that it forced a recount of the 1998 election.

As a side note, West Hawaii Today reported in July that Yoshina was the boyfriend of the former Big Island county elections administrator, Pat Nakamoto, who after being dismissed was criticized when the pair appeared in a campaign ad for a county council candidate.

Perhaps as the only state that was once a monarchy, elections are not our strong suit. Our first election as a state also had to be recounted — an effort that historians note caused a delay in the Electoral College awarding Hawaii’s votes to John F. Kennedy.

Abercrombie this week recognized that much of Hawaii’s problem is with the 20th-century way of voting. He announced that next year he would ask the Legislature to change the voting laws to allow for a total mail-in election.

"I think it makes good sense," Abercrombie said at a news conference. "It is a sensible and cost-effective way of doing it."

Even Jane Mason, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Hawaii, this week said in testimony before the Elections Commission that the "all mail-in approach to elections used by Oregon and Washington State deserves more consideration."

Voters should hope for a speedy conclusion to the ongoing studies and investigations and help from the 2013 Legislature to move Hawaii’s election system into the 21st century.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.