Question: On the election ballot questions, if I don’t select either a "yes" or "no," will it count as a "no" vote? If I vote "yes" and "no," will it invalidate the whole ballot or just the question in which both boxes were marked?
Answer: If, for some reason, you vote both "yes" and "no" to a proposed constitutional or county charter amendment, neither the question nor your entire ballot will be invalidated.
Doing so is considered an "overvote," said Rex Quidilla, spokesman for the state Elections Office.
While it is true that leaving a question about a constitutional amendment blank is considered a "no" vote, election officials say the more "technically" correct explanation is that it works against achieving the required majority approval.
And there is a difference in how not voting "yes" or "no" affects the vote tally for constitutional versus charter amendments.
Amendments to the state Constitution require a majority "yes" vote: at least
50 percent of the ballots cast, plus one.
When someone leaves a question blank or overvotes on it, "We say it counts against the ‘yesses’ achieving a majority in order for (the amendment) to be ratified," Quidilla said.
How do blank and overvotes figure in for charter amendments?
The answer is "they don’t," Quidilla said. They’re not counted. Charter amendments are determined by a simple plurality of yes or no votes.
"The idea is that any time we amend the Constitution, we have this higher test (of majority vote)," Quidilla said.
While there are no charter amendments facing voters on Oahu, residents of Hawaii, Kauai and Maui counties will be voting on amendments to their respective charters.
In Maui County the hot-button issue is whether to prohibit the "cultivation or reproduction of genetically engineered organisms."
Question: On Tuesday you listed the web pages for the gubernatorial and congressional candidates. I was wondering, why is David Ige’s address .org? I thought .org was for nonprofit organizations. All the other candidates had .com addresses.
Answer: Initially, as a website suffix, .org was supposed to denote nonprofit groups, while .com was to be geared toward commercial businesses and .net for network-related organizations and Internet service providers.
But, as the website domainregister.com explains, "This quickly became unworkable, and consequently, in the case of .com, .net and .org, a decision was made to rely on registrants to choose the TLD (top-level domain) they wish. In fact, many registrants (domain owners) order their domain name as .com, .net and .org."
.Com, .net and .org are the top three TLDs and are unrestricted open domains, which means anyone can use them for any purpose.
While there are many other TLDs that are unrestricted, such as .biz and .info, there are some, such as .gov (for federal, state or local government agencies), .edu (for universities and other educational institutions) and .mil (for the U.S. military) that are restricted to certain entities.
Mahalo
To two Costco Hawaii Kai employees. Retracing my steps in an attempt to find my lost, very sentimental money clip, I called Costco. The woman in administration asked me to describe it and said it had been turned in by an employee. When I went to pick it up, I found every last dollar still there. Getting the clip and the money was important, but more so, the good feeling was that someone went out of their way to do the right thing. Mahalo plenty to that person, You made my day. — Ann
Mahalo
To a nice mom and son. We were discussing cheeses at the Safeway in Kapahulu, and I explained what some of the cheeses were. They were behind me when we got to the checkout, and to my surprise the mom said, "I’m going to pay for your groceries." It was a very aloha thing they did, and I appreciate their thoughtfulness. — Surprised Shopper
Write to “Kokua Line” at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
