State’s election problems not about any individual

First it was all Dwayne Yoshina’s fault that Hawaii’s elections ran poorly. Back in 1998, politicians ranging from Colleen Hanabusa to Linda Lingle so howled at Yoshina’s performance that the 1998 election was recounted, all 412,000 ballots.

Turned out the election was OK, but Yoshina’s political future was iffy and he retired in 2007.

A review of the office turned up conflict-of-interest fears that it wasn’t right to have the lieutenant governor serve as chief elections officer. So a commission was formed that would independently pick the elections officer.

The first product of the elections commission was Kevin Cronin, an appointment that turned out to be the very definition of problematic. Cronin wasn’t a Hawaii registered voter and had never actually been in charge of a statewide election in any of the 50 states.

Cronin, after all four county clerks called for his dismissal, resigned after two years.

Next up is Scott Nago, who, as chief elections officer in 2012, faced complaints when precincts ran out of ballots. Now in 2014, Nago’s handling of the 2014 primary election is being investigated by three elections commission subcommittees.

It may be that the fault is not so much with Yoshina, Cronin and Nago as it is with the system.

First, as Senate President Donna Mercado Kim is saying, "clearly the elections commission standing by itself is not working."

The commission, well-intended as it may be, is responsible to no one, has no accountability and is free to drift or plow ahead as it so desires.

"We can see the commission continuing to have problems," says Kim.

Nago’s qualifications are also troublesome to Kim, who says Nago’s communications skills are poor. After an elections commission hearing last week, state Sens. Russell Ruderman and Sam Slom also criticized Nago’s performance.

In a detailed, 14-page report (http://goo.gl/197jVI) issued last week, Nago does a good job of explaining the problems with the primary amid Hurricane Iselle and the reasons for continuing the walk-up polling places in storm-damaged Puna.

Basically, Nago said voters could get to the polling place, whereas mail-in ballots can be a complicated process and elections are not supposed to be delayed.

The election’s second problem both in hurricane-damaged Puna and across the state is a ponderous system of voting at precinct polling spots rather than by mail.

Kim says she has offered legislation to set up a trial period for exclusive vote-by-mail elections, perhaps starting out with just one island. Kim suggested Kauai.

The recent primary election is the first one in Hawaii history where there were more absentee, mail-in ballots cast than walk-in votes.

A total of 289,367 people voted. The breakdown: 163,675 voted by mail and 125,692 voting in person.

State and county elections officials urged voters to vote absentee this year because of the obvious problems with Iselle bearing down on the state.

What goes unsaid, however, is that voting by mail simply solves the problem of storms wrecking polling places.

Running Hawaii’s elections by mail would take some work. First, the state Legislature would need to bear down and see it through. There are three states — Washington, Oregon and Colorado — that can offer help on how to do it, but the Legislature would have to drive it forward.

The need for change is certainly there. The primary election highlighted the problems; now it is time to stop the name-calling and put a better system in place.

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