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An audit of Hawaii County’s registered voter rolls found four people voted twice in 2010 elections and between 50 and 60 people were registered more than once, County Clerk Jamae Kawauchi said Tuesday.
Kawauchi says her office found no sign of systemic problems. She says a clerical error may be at fault, but she reported the four voters who cast ballots twice to the state attorney general’s office during a meeting last week.
She said it’s not up to her whether there will be an investigation into the matter, and declined to comment further.
Kawauchi spoke to the news media at the state Capitol after meeting with state election officials and clerks of other Hawaii counties.
Her office began their audit the weekend of July 21-22. She explained she closed her office on the following Monday — forwarding telephone calls to a Kona office and redirecting in-person visitors to another office across the hall — so her staff could complete the audit without interruption.
She didn’t notify the state Office of Elections about the closure until Monday afternoon, however.
The lack of communication unnerved the state’s chief election officer, Scott Nago, who wrote her saying her failure to communicate the reason for the closure was creating concerns about the integrity of the upcoming primary election on Aug. 11.
Kawauchi told reporters that in hindsight she should have notified the state earlier that she was closing her office on July 23.
Nago seemed satisfied, saying they had a good meeting Tuesday and worked through their issues.
The county sent out 101,000 yellow cards to voters with information on the primary election. About 5,000 were returned in the mail. Kawauchi said some will be sent to forwarding addresses. A few hundred of the 5,000 are undeliverable, she said.
