Question: To vote in Honolulu’s neighborhood board elections, the voter goes to a website, inputs a unique password and PIN they received in the mail, makes their selections and submits their online ballot. Does this system ensure voter privacy, so that no one knows who a specific voter voted for? If yes, how? I did not cast my ballot this time around because I could not find an explanation of how the online voting system works to ensure a secret ballot.
Answer: Voting for Oahu’s 2025 neighborhood board elections ran from April 25 through May 16. Election results are expected today after paper mail-in ballots postmarked by May 16 are counted (voters unable to vote online could request a paper ballot). Results will be posted on the website of the municipal government’s Neighborhood Commission Office, honolulu.gov/nco.
As for your questions, here’s how the online voting system works, according to emails from Jackson Coley, an NCO spokesperson, who said he based the responses on information from the city’s Department of Information Technology:
“Yes, the system ensures voter privacy by design. Here’s how:
“Unique Credentials: Each voter receives a private, unique passcode and PIN via USPS mail, ensuring only authorized individuals can access the voting portal.
“No Public Access: There is no public website or database to query or identify who voted for whom, preserving ballot secrecy.
“Restricted Database: Ballot data is stored in a secure, restricted database with limited access, and Neighborhood Commission Office employees cannot retrieve individual voting records through their admin tools.
“Legal Safeguards: The only way to identify a specific voter’s choices would require a court-ordered subpoena, which is a formal and highly controlled process.
“This structure prevents unauthorized access to individual votes, ensuring that no one (including the Neighborhood Commission Office) can determine how a specific voter cast their ballot.”
Oahu has 36 neighborhood boards, according to the NCO website, which are meant to assure citizens’ participation in government decisions.
Social Security town hall
Social Security will be the topic as AARP Hawai‘i hosts a telephone town hall Saturday at 9 a.m. with U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Chad Mullen, AARP’s director of financial security. People who have participated in past AARP telephone town halls will get a call to join, while others can call in toll-free at 833-305-0175 when the forum begins, according to an AARP news release. Participants will be able to ask questions, it said. More than 1 in 5 Hawaii residents receive Social Security payments, according to AARP, a nonprofit group representing the interests of older Americans.
Mahalo
On May 16 I had an incident with my car in the Alii Place parking garage. I was going to park in this man’s stall after he left. Well, my car decided to stop in his path. Dead. I approached him and another young man, Arthur, who were so helpful pushing my car into the vacant stall. Arthur then jumped into my car and fiddled with the gear shift and buttons. Voila, it started. It seems I have a Sport function on the gear shift, and I tripped it. I was so blessed to have had two guardian angels helping me with this weird situation. — Linda
(Editor’s note: Activating Sport mode shouldn’t have caused your car to die, according to our quick review of the power-boosting option, but regardless of the cause, we’re glad help was on hand. This feature is not limited to sports cars — it’s common on sedans and SUVs — and generally is activated with the touch of a button or the flip of the switch, allowing a vehicle to accelerate faster while merging onto a highway, for example.)
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 2-200, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
