One losing candidate in Hawaii’s Nov. 8 general election has challenged results in court by a statutory deadline that passed Monday.

Noelani Ahia, who competed for a nonpartisan seat on the Maui County Council retained by incumbent Alice Lee after a close race, filed a complaint Friday with the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Ahia’s challenge was the only one by a candidate, and followed five challenges by candidates in Hawaii’s Aug. 13 primary election.

All five candidate complaints in the primary election were dismissed based on plaintiffs failing to present any evidence that election outcomes would be different even if their claims were true.

In the new case, Ahia alleges that Maui’s Office of the County Clerk, which sends out and receives sealed ballots by mail, didn’t give 812 voters a fair amount of time to correct signature deficiencies on ballot envelopes received Nov. 8, the last day ballots were accepted.

Under state law, such voters have five business days following an election to correct the issue that can occur for a variety of reasons, including missing signatures or signatures that don’t match copies on file from voter registration forms or other voting records.

Ahia claims that county election officials didn’t begin to send letters to these 812 voters until Nov. 12, four days after the election, but had been taking only one or two days to notify other voters whose sealed ballots had signature issues but were received prior to Nov. 8.

The deadline to cure signature defects was Nov. 16 — eight days after the election including a Saturday, Sunday and federal holiday — but Ahia’s lawsuit contends that it took an “unreasonable” and “neglectful” amount of time to notify the 812 voters because it typically takes two days to deliver mail from one ZIP code to another on Maui.

Of the 812 voters, 106 took action by the deadline to have their votes counted, according to the county.

Ahia, co-founder of Mauna Medic Healers Hui, lost the election by 513 votes after receiving 22,220 votes to 22,733 for Lee in the race to represent the Wailuku-Waihee-Waikapu area on the Council, according to a Nov. 21 final count that included cured ballots.

“Defendants’ errors, mistakes, and mishandling in failing to reasonably notify 812 voters of their allegedly-deficient ballots changed the outcome of the Wailuku election or makes it impossible to ascertain the correct result of the election,” the complaint states.

Ahia’s complaint, which was filed by attorneys Lance Collins and Bianca Isaki, seeks to invalidate results from the Ahia-Lee race and hold a new election between the two candidates.

For Maui County, which includes Molokai and Lanai, all nine Council seats were up for election this year and every voter could vote in all nine races.

Hypothetically, if all Maui County voters with uncured signature issues, some 706 voters, had cured their ballots then Ahia would have had to gotten at least 86.4% of those votes, or 610 of 706, to come out the winner.

If Ahia doesn’t prevail in the case, it could be another cautionary tale for Hawaii voters not to send in ballots close to an election deadline.

In Hawaii’s primary election, more than 3,700 ballots statewide did not count because of signature issues.

Since 2020, the state has conducted a predominantly mail-in voting operation under a law enacted in 2019 that also allows in-person voting and depositing sealed ballots into drop boxes.

Collins said he doesn’t know if the Legislature can improve voting statute language to alleviate the issue at hand in Ahia’s case, but he is hopeful that the state Supreme Court provides some guidance on what is an appropriate amount of time to give voters to correct mistakes signing ballot envelopes.

“What is more important than counting every vote?” he said.

Defendants in Ahia’s complaint are Maui County Clerk Kathy Kaohu, Lee and Scott Nago, chief election officer at the state Office of Elections. The complaint describes Lee as Kaohu’s direct and immediate supervisor, but explains that Lee is named as a defendant only in her private capacity as a candidate.

James Krueger, deputy Maui County clerk, said in a statement Tuesday, “All voters who submitted deficient return identification envelopes were provided notice of the deficiency pursuant to law.”

Thirty registered Maui County voters joined Ahia as plaintiffs in her complaint.

Several people who are not plaintiffs submitted written declarations filed in the case. They include Molokai resident Kaneil Wallace, who said a mailed county letter with a Nov. 12 postmark notifying him that his ballot envelope had a signature deficiency wasn’t delivered to him until Nov. 21.

Wallace said in his statement that he had used an automated notification system offered by the state, BallotTrax, that indicated on Nov. 14, six days after the election, that his ballot had been accepted for counting.

Allen Paleka, a Maui resident who also submitted a declaration in the case and is not a plaintiff, said he contacted the Office of the County Clerk to cure a signature deficiency after a notice with a Nov. 12 postmark was delivered to him Nov. 15.