In 1994, it became obvious that the money provided by the Help America Vote act of 1992 was leading many states to make ill-informed purchases without considering the implications of electronic voting.

When the Hawai’i Office of Elections, under then-Chief Elections Office Dwayne Yoshina revealed that there would be paperless voting machines used in the 1994 election, a group of citizens, activists, official election observers and technologists came together to investigate the situation.  As Safe Vote Hawai’i, we met with the vendor Hart InterCivic and the Office of Elections and asked a number of pointed questions - how can a paperless machine be audited?  (It can’t.)  Are the machines reliable?  (They weren’t.)  Is sufficient care taken with our vote?  (It wasn’t.)

Surprisingly, the Office of Elections which had taken such care with the paper vote did not feel that the electronic vote needed the same kinds of safeguards.  Perhaps they just trusted the vendor, perhaps they were misinformed.  Still, it became clear that the OE and the State were not going to enforce the same high standards, and so Safe Vote Hawai’i began the process that would lead to the passing of Act 200, requiring that any voting include a Voter Verified Paper trail.  It also led to the statewide dissemination of voting information, presentations at concerned citizens groups, and testimony at State House and Senate meetings.

It can’t stop there.   Simply making the worst of the process illegal has not slowed the rush to electronic voting, as the recent award of a ten year, $49 million dollar contract makes clear.   Voting remains less than open in Hawai’i, and is getting less open with every electronic purchase.

Please join us in striving for a completely open, transparent voting system for Hawai’i and the nation.