Mahalo for supporting Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Enjoy this free story!
News this week is all about the weather and predicting how much more wet stuff we face.
May I offer a political prediction for Aug. 11, 2012?
Voters already saturated with a torrential downpour of political ads will find serious flooding and impassable precincts as they struggle to the polls.
Sustained vote trends show pockets of widespread voter confusion extending across the Koolaus from Makiki through Whitmore Village.
The expected roadside sign-holders’ ponding has snarled traffic in precincts, already obscured by last-minute reapportionment decisions.
For primary election day, the weather service is urging voters to "Turn around, vote by mail, and it won’t fail."
If that prediction is an attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, the dilemma facing the state elections office, and then Hawaii voters, isn’t funny.
The problem is this: The elections office doesn’t have new maps yet of the 51 state House districts and the 25 state Senate districts.
The maps contain the district boundaries; the boundaries set the specific addresses for streets within each district. Without those boundaries, the election office doesn’t know if you live in District 31 or 32, or wherever.
The state Reapportionment Commission meets today and may finish its work. If it does, the new maps will go to the elections office. This, unfortunately, is not a certainty because there are enough people complaining about the new maps that if the commission forces them through, there could be a lawsuit and more delays.
Ten years ago, the last Reapportionment Commission wrapped up its work in November. It then took three months for the elections office to finish the process of creating the precincts and drawing the maps.
So three months after today means June 6 is when the precinct process could reasonably be expected to be completed.
Wait — it is going to get a lot worse.
After precincts are drawn, the elections office estimates it will take another three months to assign voters to specific precincts. That would put the reasonable time to hold the primary election as sometime after Sept. 6.
Of course, as an akamai voter, you already know that the primary election is Aug. 11.
Can the elections office change the date for the elections?
Nope, it is set by law. Can the Legislature change the law and put the primary back to September? Nope. The federal government ordered Hawaii to provide at least 45 days before the general election to mail ballots to overseas voters. And another 45 days before the primary to mail means the primary has to be held by Aug. 18.
Chief elections officer Scott Nago says he will hold the elections as planned on the days required by law, but he is warning that the 2012 elections have already been cut too close.
"More time is the only thing that can help now," Nago said when I asked if the state could double or triple the 30-person state elections staff.
The whole thing expands in complexity. After voters are assigned to precincts, the elections office mails out the yellow cards notifying voters of where they are supposed to vote. The elections office also uses the returned card to indicate a voter who has moved.
Nago said one of the first indications of the systems problems will show when candidates start filing for office. The application must include a signed list of voters from the candidate’s district, but because the districts are still unknown and filing for office was supposed to start already, things are a tad touchy.
Nago predicts that human beings, not computers, will hand-check the voters’ signatures at the filing deadline on June 5.
What will be lost in all this is the time needed to check and recheck voter lists. The result will be an increased chance that voters won’t get the correct ballot.
Nago and crew say the election is like a shuttle launch: There just isn’t any room for any errors. This year, the 2012 election may not be the rocket you want to ride.
———
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
85