A final audited tally of voting in Hawaii’s Aug. 13 primary election was completed Friday and didn’t produce any new winners, though more losing candidates have filed legal challenges contesting the outcome of their races.
The state Office of Elections added all deferred votes, largely from validated provisional ballots and ballots where voters cured signature defects on ballot return envelopes within a deadline provided by law, on Thursday.
On Friday the results were confirmed after completion of an audit that involved manually counting random selections of paper ballots then comparing the counts with machine tallies.
“The office completed the post-election audit,” said Nedielyn Bueno, spokesperson for the state Office of Elections.
Several candidates had been eagerly awaiting the final accounting because of tight races where as few as eight votes determined a winner based on the last of four initial tabulations completed Aug. 14. After the fifth and final count, the smallest difference became five votes.
Essentially, winning candidates have now been elected, though the Hawaii Supreme Court must still consider five complaints filed this week contesting the election results.
These challenges were filed by four candidates, including BJ Penn and a group of voters on Kauai who met Friday’s deadline to contest election results.
Penn, a retired mixed martial arts fighting champion who finished second in a race among 10 Republicans running for governor, filed a 123-page complaint with the court Friday.
“There is an appearance of inaccurate reporting, ballot mishandling, ballot design components, breaches at counting centers and ballot deposit sites, discrimination, voter suppression, and media violations are the main catalysts for this inquiry,” Penn’s complaint states.
Some specific contentions in Penn’s complaint are that a Maui County election volunteer reported that a lock and other security features went missing on a box of ballots, and that a Maui elections observer saw “questionable” security and an “unidentified” computer server, cords and cables.
The complaint also contends that elections officials told the public there would be no in-person voting, and that the Atlanta-Journal Constitution newspaper announced winners of Hawaii’s primary election more than 12 hours before results were released publicly.
Penn received 19,817 votes and was beaten by former Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona, who amassed 37,608 votes, according to election results.
Another candidate contesting election results, Cherie Oquendo, finished in second place by five votes in the Republican primary for state House District 45, covering Waianae and Makaha.
Oquendo, a church volunteer and former airline industry worker, filed her complaint Thursday and generally questioned the integrity of voters voting and votes being counted.
Among some of Oquendo’s claims are that several voters requested ballots that were never received; that some voters who attempted to vote in person were told they had already voted by mail; that one person who attempted to vote at Kapolei Hale was turned away two minutes before polls were supposed to close; that a ballot drop box in Mililani was left open 10 minutes late; and that a Makaha resident decided not to put their ballot in a drop box at Kapolei Hale because no one was around to safeguard the box.
Oquendo also contends that 6,240 Oahu voters with “questionable” registration addresses were able to cast ballots.
“With a close proximity of only 5 votes, it could very well alter the results,” she said in her complaint.
Another challenge was filed by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Kim, who finished fifth among seven contenders.
Kim, who describes himself on his campaign website as a musician and self-taught legal expert with a dental surgery degree, received a relatively minuscule 991 votes compared with 158,161 votes for the winner, Lt. Gov. Josh Green.
His 58-page complaint, filed Tuesday, contends in part that manipulated computer programming transferred about 98,500 votes for Kim to Green, and that he would have been the victor had tabulation machines not been compromised.
“Anyone can implement a simple computer program on any targeted candidate(s) to rig the vote counting,” Kim said in his complaint.
Kim, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018, filed a complaint in that election where he made allegations that included a rigged election.
The court, in a decision dismissing Kim’s 2018 complaint, said that a plaintiff challenging a primary election must show that he or she has actual information of mistakes or errors sufficient to change the election result.
“An election contest cannot be based upon mere belief or indefinite information,” the court said in its written judgment.
A fourth candidate in this year’s primary challenging election results is Gary Cordery, who finished third among Republicans seeking to be governor. Cordery’s complaint filed Monday largely takes issue with ballot instructions and format, and he does not contend that such things benefited his competitors over himself.
On Kauai, 70 voters led by construction company owner Ralph Cushnie filed an election challenge Friday contending that election officials failed to properly audit vote results for Kauai, in part by not allowing volunteer observers to randomly select ballots for audit.
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