Concerns About Vote-by-Mail

Dear Editor:    May 30, 2019

I have written to Governor Ige urging him to veto H.B. 1248, which provides for all mail-in balloting. I have several concerns.

First, we have prohibitions on campaigning near the polling places to insure the privacy of the voting booth and to preclude attempts to unduly influence voters. Mail-in ballots invite influence, whether by other family members or neighbors, unions or employers asking the members to bring in their ballots for “assistance” in voting, staff of a nursing home “assisting” their patients with voting, or party operatives engaging in “ballot harvesting” as happened in California during the last election, where volunteers went door-to-door to registered party members to pick up ballots from those who hadn’t yet voted.

Second, Hawaii has not cleaned up its voter rolls in many years. I understand the law requires persons to be purged from the rolls who have not voted during two consecutive election cycles. I know individuals who haven’t lived here (or voted here) in 20 years who are still on the voter rolls. This problem adds a great opportunity for voter fraud with mail-in ballots.

Third, I believe that the “civic ritual” of going to the polls on Election Day is important. Then all voters are working with the same information. There’s a good feeling of doing one’s civic duty when I go to the polls to vote. Those who don’t care enough to vote at the polls are those most likely to be manipulated by others seeking to influence the election outcome. Absentee ballots should be restricted to those who can’t reasonably vote on Election Day.

I believe that maintaining confidence in the election process and the privacy of voting is critical. Please consider joining me in asking the Governor to veto this measure.

Bill Hastings

Kamuela, Hawaii

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Mail voting and corruption

Dear Editor:    May 30, 2019

It looks like bad timing for All-Mail Voting since corruption in local Hawaii politics might be at an all-time high (Rail, Kealoha’s, state bribery federal investigations).  In a climate of widespread government corruption, voter fraud becomes too easy and inviting.

The theory that we would improve HI’s embarrassingly, rock bottom last place voter turn-out rate is questionable.  It may be that with All-Mail Voting, you would simply increase the amount of voters largely by fraudulent ones and votes by people that don’t even care enough to vote otherwise.

All-Mail Voting simply means that we will TRUST local government officials to verify the legitimacy of each ballot.  How confident are we of this?  It should be noted that the ones under federal investigation are the very ones that are supposed to protect us from fraud and corruption. 

Remember when they said how cheap and under control Rail would be?

Leighton Loo

Mililani, Oahu