Signature issues on Hawaii primary ballots left thousands of votes uncounted

A lot of voters perhaps could have benefited from autograph practice before submitting mail-in ballots for Hawaii’s Aug. 13 primary election.

Despite lower participation in the recent election, more voters on Oahu mailed or dropped off ballots that weren’t counted because of nonmatching or missing signatures on ballot return envelopes compared with the 2020 primary election when mail-in voting became the predominant form of voting in Hawaii under a 2019 decision by state lawmakers.

According to the Elections Division of Honolulu’s Office of the City Clerk, which verifies ballot envelope signatures for Oahu voters, about 2,500 ballots received during the recent election ultimately weren’t counted because of nonmatching or missing signatures. That compared with about 1,700 two years ago and represented a 47% jump.

The increase is surprising given that about 47,000 more people on Oahu voted in the 2020 primary election — 275,744 compared with 228,522 two weeks ago.

Under state law, election officials had to inform all voters who submitted such defective ballots. Many of these voters corrected deficiencies prior to Aug. 13, though they had five business days following the last day of voting, which was Monday, to cure such defects.

On Aug. 14 there were still roughly 3,700 Oahu ballot envelopes with signature problems, and about 1,200 were cured by Monday’s deadline. That cut the number of ultimately uncounted Oahu ballots to about 2,500.

The 1,200 cured ballots will be added to final election results being processed by the state Office of Elections.

Other counties in the state have the same responsibility — sending ballots to voters, verifying signatures on returned ballot envelopes and forwarding all acceptable and unopened ballot envelopes to the state Office of Elections for vote tabulation. Likewise, each county receives some ballots from voters that don’t meet the signature requirement.

On Hawaii island, the county reported receiving 53,382 ballots for this year’s primary election. Of those, 1,007 had a signature problem and 412 of those deficiencies were corrected by voters after being contacted. That left 595 ballots uncounted.

Maui County reported having 1,085 ballots with signature defects as of Aug. 13, and 611 of those weren’t counted while 474 were cured between Aug. 13 and Monday’s deadline.

Rex Quidilla, elections administrator for Honolulu, said the city’s signature verification process is partly automated but does involve a painstaking amount of direct verification by staff.

“You need to be careful,” he said. “It really is a lot of work.”

A machine that can scan and sort up to 300 envelopes a minute initially captures an image of the signature from each envelope. The machine then compares each signature with signatures previously submitted by each registered voter and determines whether the signature on the envelope is passable or not.

This comparison using software typically passes about half the ballot envelopes. The other half gets a human review in which city elections staff compare digital images of signatures taken by the machine with signatures on file, which can include signatures from the previous election, a voter registration form and even signature books from polling places where people voted many years ago.

Quidilla said about a dozen staff handle this work, which includes applying techniques from a signature expert.

For envelopes where an initial staff inspection results in no match, a second inspection is made by a supervisor. If the second check fails, a third examination is made by the most senior staff as a final call. If at that point no match is declared, then the voter is contacted and given the opportunity to resolve the problem.

On days with the highest ballot receipt volume, it can take 12 to 14 hours for city staff to complete the validation process. The city also added a second processing machine this year to handle higher ballot volume or offset downtime if one machine needs maintenance or repair.

Quidilla said he can’t speculate on why more ballots weren’t counted because of signature problems in this year’s primary election.

Some people just don’t have highly consistent signatures. In some cases, voters may be trying too hard to produce their best autograph, or not paying enough attention.

The city Elections Division didn’t have a breakdown Wednesday between the number of envelopes that had nonmatching signatures and the number with no signature.

In the 2020 primary election, more uncounted ballots had nonmatching signatures than no signature — 1,237 compared with 451.

This year all county election offices began offering a free service that can let voters know by text, email or phone when their mailed ballot is received and if there is any discrepancy with the ballot envelope. This service is available at hawaii.ballottrax.net.

Hawaii’s general election is Nov. 8, so there is also plenty of time to practice the old John Hancock.