{"id":6737,"date":"2012-10-27T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6737"},"modified":"2012-10-26T15:38:13","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T19:38:13","slug":"voting-mishaps-isolated-flukes-or-systemic-flaws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/10\/27\/voting-mishaps-isolated-flukes-or-systemic-flaws\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting mishaps: isolated flukes or systemic flaws?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

2012 ballot from the State of Hawaii (photo by Lucy Martin)<\/p><\/div>\n

I have voted. At least\u00a0I think so.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s hard to be sure. And that’s not good.<\/p>\n

Lots of Americans live abroad. It’s difficult to know exactly what that figure is, and not all of those Americans abroad are eligible to vote (such as children under 18). But by some estimates<\/a> there are close to one million potential U.S. voters in Canada alone.<\/p>\n

Those who have not yet registered for November’s contest may have waited too long to participate this time around. But the process is fairly simple, as explained at the Federal Voting Assistance Program<\/a> (FVAP) or CanIvote.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

American citizens whose legal residence is outside the U.S. remain eligible to vote in federal elections. Those offices would be: president, senate and house races for the state\/district of their last official residency in the U.S.<\/p>\n

That process has gone very well for me across more than a\u00a0decade of living in the Ottawa region. Until this year, that is. Apparently, I’m not the only one experiencing problems. When it comes to voting, my home state of Hawaii has been making the wrong sort of headlines.<\/p>\n

The U.S. election process is generally left to state and local officials. In Hawaii much of the basic work is managed on the county level. According to Wikipedia, as of 2007 there were\u00a03,033 counties or county equivalents<\/a> (like parishes) in the U.S. I doubt each and every one runs its own election process. But it’s probably fair to say the system includes considerable variability.<\/p>\n

What has gone amiss in Hawaii? Oh my, where to start? How about with the primary election of August 11th where polling stations on the Big Island of Hawaii were impacted by a\u00a0noticeable\u00a0outbreak of “blue-flu”. As reported by the Associated Press<\/a>, enough election staff called in sick that some polling locations had to open late. Governor Neil Abercrombie ordered that Big Island polling stations stay open an additional 90 minutes to help remedy the situation.<\/p>\n

The Hawaii County Clerk in charge of elections on the Big Island, Jamae Kawauchi,\u00a0issued a report about primary mishaps<\/a>, in which she casts some blame on the State Office of Elections. The finger pointing is sufficiently messy that the\u00a0State of Hawaii Office\u00a0of Elections<\/a>\u00a0will\u00a0step in and run the general elections<\/a>\u00a0on that island this November.<\/p>\n

Moving next to the island of Oahu, the City and County of Honolulu. In Manoa Valley 817 absentee voters\u00a0received\u00a0double ballots due to a printing error. As reported by KHON2<\/a>, apologetic officials are mailing those voters yet a third<\/em> ballot, and asking them to use it. (Any duplicate votes in that situation are to be siphoned off inside the system.)<\/p>\n

I vote in the City and County of Honolulu\u00a0jurisdiction. Due to a mix-up, I got the absentee ballot with the full slate of local and federal offices. I requested and\u00a0received\u00a0a federal-only ballot. I am fairly confident that will arrive in time to be counted. (Mail from Ottawa to Hawaii can take anywhere from a week to 10 days.) Meanwhile, another voter I know chose to vote by email. The email ballot this person received\u00a0explicitly stated there was no senate contest in Hawaii this year. In fact, there’s an important senate race between former Republican Governor Linda Lingle<\/a> and current Democratic Congresswoman Mazie Hirono<\/a>. I’d call that a serious ballot error, especially with the whole country being quite interested in which party will control the senate.<\/p>\n

In the not-as-serious-but-still-incorrect department, just this week Big Island paper West Hawaii Today<\/a> is reporting that:<\/p>\n

More than one-half million Hawaii ballots were printed with the presidential candidates in no particular order, despite a state law that says all candidates must be in alphabetical order within their respective races.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This may be\u00a0manini<\/em>, as folks say in Hawaii (small potatoes, pretty minor). After all, the names are there, just not in the correct order. But when ballots are not done correctly, critics or losing parties have a legal basis to challenge the results. And that’s not manini<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Hawaii got national exposure of dubious distinction when CNN did some in-depth reporting on voter turn out. John Sutter’s article “Hawaii: the state that doesn’t vote”<\/a>\u00a0(and the accompanying video) strikes me as a decent effort at explaining something that’s not very flattering.<\/p>\n

It didn’t used to be that way. In\u00a0elementary\u00a0school my teachers were proud to teach that Hawaii had one of the best voter turn-outs in the nation. Civic pride ran strong in older generations there, as demonstrated by this widely-reprinted AP story of WWII veteran Frank Tanabe<\/a> making sure he voted before he died.<\/p>\n

You’d think that would be the whole story: a noble life marked by patriotic devotion. But no, even death makes elections twist in odd ways. Hawaii law states that votes cast by citizens who die before election day shall not be counted. Except if the death has not been officially recorded by the Department of Health. In that case, the vote may be counted.<\/a>\u00a0As NPR reports, it sort of depends.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not trying to pick on Hawaii. (Though 2012 does not appear to be that state’s shining hour of election excellence.)<\/p>\n

No, my question is this: is it time to create stronger standards for elections, or to centralize the structure and supervision of voting? I see pros and cons either way. But – whoever is in charge – I’d argue that voting shouldn’t be this\u00a0squirrelly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have voted. At least\u00a0I think so. Sometimes it’s hard to be sure. And that’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[7061,6559,6550,7060,7059,7058],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6778,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions\/6778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}