It looks like the dispute over the Hawaii State Election Commission’s selection of a vendor for voting machines could get murkier as a result of the experience on the mainland this year.
In Minnesota, the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken remains unresolved, and the performance of voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) appear to be a key issue.
According to published reports, Minnesota uses paper ballots which in many counties are counted using optical scanners manufactured by ES&S. There have been several reports that optical readers may misread ballots if they have not been properly maintained.
Miscounts reported in Michigan could have resulted from a lack of preventive maintenance and regular cleaning.
In the event of a recount, though, ES&S offers the actual ballots, while competing electronic systems with paper backup, such as used in Hawaii this year, use a continuous roll of paper with tiny type to record electronic votes. I would think doing a recall with that tiny type will be harder, although perhaps they’ve got nice systems to magnify the type for human reading.
In Hawaii, ES&S has challenged the award of a long-term contract to one of its competitors. ES&S was the low bidder, far below the company actually selected.
However, there have been other problems with the ES&S optical readers, including in the 1998 election in Hawaii, where a handful of readers failed and the company eventually had to pay the state over $500,000 to settle the dispute and recount ballots.
In any case, given the problems in Minnesota, Hawaii Chief Election Officer Kevin Cronin might be excused for an “I told you so” feeling, at least for now.
Thanks to Richard Borreca for his column in today’s Star-Bulletin reminding us that while Hawaii doesn’t have arbitrary term limits, voters have been quite effective at inducing legislative turnover.
According to Borreca’s count, move than 60 percent of those serving in the legislature in the 2000-2001 session are no longer in office. That’s quite a significant amount of movement, and quite different than the “incumbents always win” views expressed so often by some observers.
Governor Lingle, after going around the country mouthing the GOP’s conservative attacks on Obama, is now trying to rescue what might be left of her reputation by distancing herself from the Republican platform, calling it “too rigid”.
And did you catch her quote in response to conservative blogger Eric Ryan, one of the key players in the “Stop Rail” block, who recently referred to Lingle as “our jet-setting, absentee governess” and called on all local Republican Party leaders to resign.
“I just take it all with a grain of salt when it’s someone who really hasn’t experienced what they’re talking about,” Lingle said. “Someone who sits in their room and blogs, I’m not certain someone like that really has much to offer.”
The Livable Hawaii Kai Hui has announced a holiday plant sale to benefit the farmers of Kamilo Nui Valley.
Help protect the valley from development while meeting your holiday needs!
Finally, this was the view enjoyed by campers at Swanzy Beach Park in Kaaawa early yesterday. Just another morning on the windward side. Enjoy.
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The Hart machines we use here work quite well. In particular, the “electronic” DREs are actually a fancy front end for a paper ballot that can be tracked. On the other hand, sometimes they flake out for unknown reasons. I’ve had two DREs have paper jams during a polling day and this last election saw our eScan ballot reader suddenly refuse to read ballots. All you can do is insert ballots into the side “emergency” slot when that happens, and feed them in when the reading head is replaced.
For the first time, we had people waiting to use the DRE machine. The notion of “electronic” voting is catching on, as long as there’s a paper trail and chain of custody.
Hawaii has paper ballots fed into an optical scanner, currently manufactured by HART. The paper ballots are part of a manual audit done the evening of the election, pre-certification. ten percent of precincts are counted. it is a check on the optical scanners. if the ten percent audit does not show the same trend as the scanners, it is suppose to generate an complete manual recount. The DRE (electronic voting machines) generate a paper trail, also audited with the precinct paper ballots. No one reported trouble reading it.
during the primary approximately 10% of voters chose to use DRE. (i could be off slightly on the percentage, but in that area)