Report to the Elections Commission (excerpts)

by Scott Nago, Chief Elections Officer     August 21, 2014

The following memorandum addresses the various issues that we experienced in the Primary Election, including the postponement of the election for two precincts due to Tropical Storm lselle and the reconciliation of over 800 absentee ballots in the County of Maui.

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While each factual situation is different, the precedent for holding elections in the face of natural disasters in a timely manner has been clearly established.

For example, our state's own experience with Hurricane lniki, a Category 4 hurricane, that in no uncertain terms devastated the County of Kauai and that it took a significant amount of time to recover from, was that the regularly scheduled Primary Election was still held on September 19, 1992, eight days after Hurricane lniki struck the County of Kauai.

In 1992, Dade County in the State of Florida postponed its primary election by a week in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. This postponement affected a total of 102 precincts, involving 132,000 voters.

On September 11, 2001, the State of New York was conducting its primary election when the terrorist attacks occurred. The election was postponed that afternoon and eventually rescheduled less than two weeks later.

Our country's record for postponement of general elections is more striking. No general election has ever been postponed or delayed due to a natural disaster, or for any other reason, including war....

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On election night, there was a concern that a memory card containing vote data was read more than once. While the computerized voting counting system safeguards vote totals by preventing memory cards from being entered more than once, in an abundance of caution, the staff decided to start over and re-read all memory cards. It is at this point that one memory card was not read again and it was subsequently sealed away with the other memory cards and associated voting materials. As part of the standard process of reading memory cards into the system, the vendor has a check off system whereby a notation is made as to reading each memory card. This process was not modified by the vendor under these circumstances to include an additional notation that each memory card had been read a second time. In this case, the card that was not read was from a batch of absentee mail ballots, which is comprised of a variety of ballot types from the entire County of Maui.

Given this anomalous situation, the initial provisional absentee ballot reconciliation report used by the County Clerk on election night was compromised. Subsequently, as part of the previously mentioned post-election comparison and reconciliation process, the issue was addressed and the memory card was unsealed in front of official observers and the data uploaded for reporting purposes....

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