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Serious concerns about the integrity of Hawaii’s 2012 primary election need priority attention in the next Legislature.
On Hawaii island a clueless county clerk backed by a lame-duck Council chairman made shambles of the primary, and there seems nothing anybody can do about it as they stumble toward a possible repeat in the general election.
On Oahu, allegations of voter intimidation involving mail-in absentee ballots exposed a dangerous potential for vote manipulation as we move closer to all-mail voting.
The problems result from a system in which the state and counties share responsibility for elections but neither is fully accountable for their fair and competent conduct.
Big Island County Clerk Jamae Kawauchi was obviously in over her head and her office in disarray as the primary approached, but nothing was done to stop an election day disaster in which polling places opened late and Gov. Neil Abercrombie had to declare an emergency extension of voting hours.
The chaos clouded the results of a state Senate race decided by 69 votes and a state House race decided by 45 votes.
The County Council, headed by unsuccessful mayoral candidate Dominic Yagong, still refuses to step in as problems mount, and the state Office of Elections has no power under the law to do anything but raise red flags.
Clearly, we need a statewide authority with overall responsibility and accountability for elections, a function previously served by the lieutenant governor.
In Kalihi, state House candidate Romy Cachola and City Council candidate Joey Manahan, both successful, were accused of going door to door to help mail-in absentee voters — many of them elderly — with their ballots.
Cachola, who defeated 26-year-old newcomer Nicole Velasco in the Democratic primary by 1,236 votes to 1,116, got 685 of his votes to 243 for Velasco from mail-in absentee ballots in a single precinct.
Velasco won 60 percent of the walk-in vote from the district’s four precincts and also won the mail-ins from the other three precincts, according to an analysis by Honolulu Civil Beat.
Manahan also got an outsize mail-in vote in the same precinct, but beat Martin Han by a wide margin across the board.
Cachola said he simply assists voters who have trouble understanding the ballot because of language difficulties; the law is unclear on where the line is.
The cloudiness offers enormous abuse potential for candidates with ties to organizations such as nursing homes, and the Legislature needs to draw a clearer line of propriety and tighten enforcement.
The last thing we need in our stagnant political environment is for young newcomers like Velasco and House candidate Kalei Akaka on Hawaii island to take the leap, work hard, connect with voters and then come away feeling cheated by the system.
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
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