Hawaii County police detectives have opened an investigation into allegations of voter fraud during the 2010 election.
The investigation is based on information provided Tuesday by the Hawaii County Office of Elections, said Capt. Mitchell Kanehailua of the Hawaii County Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division.
Detectives “don’t think any election outcomes were affected by this,”?Kanehailua said. There are no suspects at this time, he added.
Kanehailua declined to provide other details, citing the pending investigation.
Hawaii County Clerk Jamae Kawauchi, in a news release late Tuesday, said she could not
comment on what is now a police investigation.
In late July, Kawauchi told reporters that an audit of the county’s voter rolls showed four people voted twice in 2010 elections and that between 50 and 60 people were registered more than once.
She said at the time that she suspected it may have been a clerical error, but that she reported the discrepancy to the state attorney general’s office in July.
The audit occurred the weekend of July 21-22, when Kawauchi diverted phone calls to her office’s Kona branch and redirected in-person visitors to a nearby office space so her staff could complete the audit without interruption.
Kawauchi’s office has come under fire by the state Office of Elections and the public for her handling of last month’s primary election.
More than a dozen precincts on Hawaii island opened late on primary election day, Aug. 11.
Additionally, Kawauchi received criticism for changing the procedure for dropping off absentee ballots at the Kona elections office and traditional walk-in voting sites in Hilo, Kealakehe and Waimea two weeks before the primary. The closure of the Hilo office for the one-day audit and an ongoing chilly relationship with state election officials have also been cited.
Kanehailua said the police investigation into voter fraud, which constitutes a Class C felony, may be a first in his department.
“This is not something we do every day,”?he said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had a case like this filed.”
