For the second straight general election in Hawaii, a candidate is alleging in court that Maui County’s top election official improperly prevented valid votes from being counted.

Kelly King, a Maui County Council member from 2017 to 2023 who was unsuccessful winning back her former seat in the Nov. 5 election, filed a Hawaii Supreme Court complaint Monday seeking to invalidate voting results and to hold a new election for the position representing South Maui where incumbent Tom Cook was declared the winner by 97 votes.

King’s legal challenge contends that a higher-than-­normal percentage of sealed mail-in ballots were rejected by County Clerk Moana Lutey due to deficiencies with required voter signatures on ballot envelopes.

“This constitutes an irregularity in the Maui election,” the complaint states.

The filing by King, which includes 30 voters as co-plaintiffs, cites a county report about 1,069 ballot envelopes being flagged for deficiencies.

Such deficiencies can include the lack of a signature, or a signature that doesn’t match one on file based on an initial electronic check, followed if necessary by a visual inspection by a trained official.

After the county said affected voters were notified and given an opportunity to correct issues by Nov. 13, at least 173 ballots weren’t counted by the state Office of Elections, according to the complaint.

King’s election challenge contends that Maui County’s rate for rejected ballots due to envelope verification issues in the recent election was 1.9%, nearly double the 1% national average in 2022 and above a statewide Hawaii average ranging from 0.8% to 1.2% in recent years.

Maui’s rate of rejected sealed ballots also was up from about 1.4% in 2022 and 0.4% in 2020, according to the complaint.

Brian Richardson, a librarian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has two doctoral degrees, five master’s degrees and expertise in statistics and data, said in a written declaration filed in the King case that it is “statistically improbable” that the amount of ballot envelope deficiencies was caused by voter signature discrepancies.

King’s election challenge also contends that a significant number of voters with rejected ballot envelopes claim there was no observable difference between what they wrote and their signatures on file and that numerous voters weren’t notified about their ballot envelopes being deemed deficient.

In a Nov. 8 news release, Lutey said that every voter with a deficient ballot envelope was mailed a letter with an affidavit form and instructions to cure the deficiency.

Lutey also said in the release that her office followed up with emails and that voters who had not responded were being contacted by phone if such contact information is in their voter record.

On Tuesday, Lutey said in a written statement that Maui County election officials followed procedures set out in state law and administrative rules regarding voter envelope verification and that about a third of voters who received deficiency notices cured their envelopes and had their ballots counted.

Lance Collins, a Maui attorney representing King and the other plaintiffs in the case along with Honolulu attorney Bianca Isaki, said in a statement that more Maui County voters were deprived of their constitutional right to vote in the recent election.

Collins called that deeply troubling despite a Hawaii Supreme Court admonition to Maui County’s previous clerk in a 2022 case that sought to overturn close race results.

In the 2022 case, Noelani Ahia, a candidate for Maui County Council who lost to incumbent Alice Lee by 513 votes, claimed that then-Maui County Clerk Kathy Kaohu took too long to notify many voters about ballot envelope signature deficiencies.

Of 865 deficient ballot envelopes that year, Kaohu’s office didn’t send notifications to 215 voters until four days after Election Day because officials were busy with other tasks that included two days spent dismantling a voter service center. This delay left at least some of those voters with just one day to validate their ballot submissions.

The court concluded that Kaohu didn’t make reasonable efforts to determine the validity of ballot envelopes within seven days following Election Day as required by state law.

“The notice-to-cure should have been mailed sooner,” the court’s decision said.

However, the court also found that Kaohu’s faulty action wasn’t big enough to change the outcome of the election because Ahia lost to Lee by 513 votes, so Ahia’s request for a new election was rejected in a 4-1 decision.

Hawaii election officials routinely advise voters to vote early, in part to ensure that they have time to correct potential problems with ballot submissions.

Additionally, voters can check or receive automated notifications about the status of mail-in ballot submissions using the free BallotTrax service.

More information about BallotTrax is available online at Hawaii.BallotTrax.net.