Investigating errors and possible fraud in the state’s voter registration database is the responsibility of the county elections clerks and not the state, Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago told the state Elections Commission on Wednesday.
Nago’s description of how county clerks update their registration database came after repeated questioning about how the state’s automatic voter registration law is proceeding, why there could be as many as 100,000 bad voter registrations in the registration database of some 900,000 registrants and why names linger on the voter rolls for many years.
One issue, noted testifier Sandy Ma with Common Cause Hawaii, is that the state’s automatic voter registration process implemented last year ties the registered voter’s address for the all-mail ballot election to that of the address of the application or renewal of the driver’s license. But on Hawaii Island, Kauai and Maui, when drivers change their address with the county DMV, they are not issued a new license, so their ballot will be sent to the old address, Ma said.
“We have not seen that the change of address is an official voter registration update,” Ma said.”If you moved … you have to do it again because that ballot is not going to follow you.”
It’s worse than that, another testifier alleged.
In Hawaii’s voter registration database, there’s a voter named “United States Hawaii.” There’s a voter who registered to vote in 1917. There’s a voter who died in 2005. Those are among the assertions of Honolulu resident Adriel Lam, who filed a complaint with the Elections Commission detailing five specific issues.
“I think it does matter in any trust in election that our votes matter and are counted,” Lam said.
Commissioners seemed concerned as well.
“The sense I’m getting, it’s a little bit laissez-faire in terms of making sure our registration databases are accurate,” noted Commissioner William Dean.
Commissioner Lillian Koller pushed for answers from Nago.
“Do you in your office have the oversight of the integrity of the data in the counties’ function?” she asked. “Does the statewide Office of Elections have authority for oversight to ensure a better outcome than what we see in these embarrassing examples?”
Nago said people may be in the database, but their ballots wouldn’t be accepted if they’ve not been verified. He said questionable entries are flagged in the database, but not immediately removed.
“Federal law says you cannot be removed for failure to vote,” Nago said. “If there’s a questionable address you won’t receive a ballot but you will still be registered.”
Nago said the county elections clerks receive periodic notices of deaths from the state Department of Health to enable them to remove the names from their database. Allegations of fraud are investigated by those same officials, who generally will turn it over to the county prosecutor’s office if they feel it warranted, he said.
Commission Chairman Scotty Anderson said he is concerned about the allegations and he vowed to follow up with Nago and also with the City and County of Honolulu.
“I agree with you,” Anderson said.”I want all votes to count except the ones that are illegal and I don’t want them to count.”