Hawaii’s high court rejects Maui election challenge

The Hawaii Supreme Court on Friday ruled that incumbent Maui County Council member Alice Lee won reelection in the Nov. 8 general election, saying a challenge over disputed ballots would not have changed the outcome.

Election results showed that Lee won the race for the Wailuku-Waihee-Waikapu seat with 22,733 votes — just 513 votes more than challenger Noelani Ahia.

Ahia, who ran on the self-proclaimed progressive Maui ‘Ohana ticket, and dozens of voters in the district filed a complaint based on the more than 860 deficient mail-in ballots that were either unsigned, had a problematic signature or showed what they claimed were signs of possible tampering.

The focus of the complaint alleged that Maui County Clerk Kathy Kaohu delayed mailing out a “notice-to-cure” to some of those voters to correct their ballots — specifically the 215 notices the high court said were sent out Nov. 12, which didn’t give the voters an adequate amount of time to resolve the issues and have their ballots counted.

The high court, in a majority decision issued Friday, noted that the 215 problematic ballots were received no later than Nov. 8 and that Kaohu should have mailed out the notices earlier.

However, the court said those ballots — even if counted as votes for Ahia — would not have been enough to defeat Lee.

“Based on the record, the court holds that the mistake by the Clerk to wait until November 12, 2022 to mail the notice-to-cure to the 215 voters would not change the outcome of the election,” the Supreme Court decision said.

The decision was signed by four of the state Supreme Court’s five justices.

Associate Justice Michael Wilson, the lone dissenter, argued that another election should be held for the Council seat since Lee’s 513-vote margin of victory is smaller than the number of ballots that still need to be verified.

In addition to the 215 voters who were not given adequate notice to correct their ballots, Wilson said 463 ballots were not counted because the voter signatures bore signs that may have invalided them. Kaohu did not make a reasonable effort to determine the validity of those ballots, Wilson argued, so there are 678 total questionable ballots.

“The election must be set aside and the clerk directed to hold another election in accordance with the presumption of validity that protects the most important right born by the citizens of Hawaii: the right to vote,” Wilson said.