David Shapiro: Hawaii must work to keep national political ugliness away

The current ruckus over alleged election irregularities reminds me of a 1972 dispute when former Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi demanded a recount in his race against Andy Anderson — not because he lost, but because he didn’t win by as big a margin as he expected.

Fasi wasn’t seeking a hand recount; rather preposterously, he wanted to replace the ballot counting software on state computers with a program hastily written by his own information technology guy.

Then-Lt. Gov. George Ariyoshi, who ran elections, dismissed the complaint until respected TV journalist Byron Baker broadcast his own unsupported doubts about Fasi’s victory margin.

Ariyoshi responded by summoning political reporters the next morning to hand-count random precincts to prove the results were accurate.

Baker stuck his head in briefly to announce, “I’m satisfied,” then went about his day while the rest of us spent ours tallying ballots, a mind-numbing task that verified the computer.

This was the start of my understanding that true election fraud in our state and country is extremely rare, and most claims of it are political hooey.

But as we are seeing today, hooey can become incendiary, with election workers even in Hawaii increasingly being threatened by supporters of Donald Trump, who continue to falsely deny his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

This friction has moved far beyond the point of facts and reason. All we can do is what Ariyoshi did: try to keep faith with the majority of voters by credibly following up on even dubious claims of election irregularities. We must also keep improving safeguards to be sure our elections are well managed and transparent beyond any reasonable doubt.

Some on the political right distrust the system so much that they want to abandon modern computerized voting and return to 100% in-person elections, with paper ballots counted by hand.

This isn’t necessary, or fair to those who require mail or computer assistance to vote, but computerized vote counting does need to be tightened with a clear paper trail to document every vote when disputes arise.

That’s been an advantage of well-conceived vote-by-mail systems like Hawaii’s. Ultimately, every vote is on paper, not a computer chip, and can be examined and recounted by hand if necessary.

Some of the most fervent voting battles go beyond Election Day and involve efforts by political parties and other interest groups to shape the electorate in their favor before voters go to the polls.

We’ve seen worrisome accusations in key swing states of voter suppression. Gerrymandering is more brazen than ever, intimidation is blatant and election oversight positions that used to be reasonably nonpartisan are being filled by ultrapartisans, including election deniers from 2020.

We can’t keep bits of this ugliness from reaching Hawaii, as has occurred in this year’s election, but it shouldn’t deter us from pursuing the ideal of making it as convenient and accessible as possible for all eligible voters to cast ballots — and to count them correctly.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.