Scott Nago: “This will not happen again”
Scott Nago, Chief Election Officer, has released a public statement on Tuesday's ballot shortages.
The statement is reproduced below, verbatim.
Statement By Chief Election On General Election
The Office of Elections apologizes to all voters who were impacted by the insufficient amount of ballots at various polling places across the City and County of Honolulu. This will not happen again.
We acknowledge that the wrong amount of ballots was ordered for this election. This was due in part to the Office of Elections adjusting its normal model for calculating the amount of ballots for each polling place. These changes failed to provide the necessary amount of paper ballots for each precinct.
On election day, when the polls started to report that they were getting low on ballots we attempted to deliver additional ballots. The office was able to replenish ballots to a number of polling places before running out. As the day went on, the amount of polling places experiencing this problem outstripped my staff’s ability to deliver ballots before the supply of ballots was exhausted.
By state law, all voters in line at the close of polls are able to vote. As such, we went to the media and encourage all impacted voters to remain in line as they would be permitted to vote and that they should utilize the electronic voting machines. In the end, all voters in line at the close of polls were permitted to vote.
Ultimately, as I stated before, the Office of Election apologizes to all voters who were impacted by this and we will make sure that this never happens again.