 All right, one o'clock rock, we're back, I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, and we're talking today about community matters, and let me just say that this is a year that will test the medal of the United States, and its system in general, given the statements made by some of our national candidates, we really have to do a good job at voting. And we have two guests today who can talk about that. One is Terry Headey, she is the communications director from the League of Women Voters, a very important organization in our community, and Scott Nego, he is the chief election officer of the state of Hawaii, right here at our table, all fabulous that we have you guys. Thank you for coming down. Great, we're happy to be here. Thank you for having us. So, you know, we hear from Donald Trump that the election is rigged. He intentionally, willfully, and repeatedly, you know, throws the suspicion on the system. This is very destructive stuff in a country which depends on public confidence in the administration of government, including elections. So my question to you is, this year, right now, three weeks from now, both federal and state and city, how important is it that our citizens get out there and vote? Is it more important now than it was before, is it less? Oh, see, I want to answer first, just because that infuriates me, infuriates me when anybody, I don't care who it is, talks about how this elections are rigged. They're talking about me and the people that work on my staff. Every polling site is manned by volunteers who believe this is the most important part of our democracy. This is the living, breathing portion of our democracy. That's our heart, right here, in action, and for anybody to cast this version on that. I just saw that The Washington Post printed an article where they talked about out of one billion votes, one billion votes, that's a lot of zeros, thirty-nine cases of fraud. Yeah, that's about right. Where are you going to be? Venus. Yeah, who's going to rig the election? What it means is the system is working very well. Yeah, rigging the election means the people in my neighborhood that work in my precinct are, or what, cheating? They're there when we open that ballot box. Do you have any idea what he means? None. That's Donald Trump. What he means when he says that the election is rigged. Do you have any idea? Not me. What about you? You're the expert on elections. I think he's saying that the elections are rigged by the media, so it's basically a media bias on the coverage, but I can assure you that the elections are not rigged. People like Terry here who work the polling place, they're just ordinary citizens of their community, they know their voters, and they're the guardians of democracy is what we call them, and they do a good job. Everything's done transparently, everything's done securely, so as far as rigging the election, I don't know how it can be done. Yeah, well, I want to go further into that. We go through training, we have processes, we have procedures, we have checklists, we have checks and balances, we have poll watchers that are different than your poll workers. The watchers come from campaigns and the Democratic parties, and they are welcome, they're allowed one per polling site, but they're welcome to come and enjoy our processes and procedures with us. Go ahead, validate us, because that's what you're doing by standing there. What kind of machines do you use, and is there a paper trail? There is absolutely a paper trail. And we start out our day by opening the vote count machine. We have our ballots that our ballot issuing stations have complete control of all day long. We have one packet of ballots at a time, and this time we're going to have two pages on our ballot. I don't know if we have our sample ballot with us, but two, we're going to have an A and a B form because of all the charter amendments and the state amendments that are on there. So we'll be issuing two ballots at a time, and when they go over to put that ballot in that box, the first thing we do in the morning is we open it up and verify with our first voter that that box starts out empty. And at night when we close the polls, we open that box up again, cut the seal on it, open, unlock it, and make sure that all those ballots go into boxes to be counted. I mean, there's no way we could lose the paper. And how do the boxes get, or the ballots and the boxes get to the place where they are counted? And we also have an electronic machine, and it has a printer on it where there's a thing. So we take and we box all those up in these boxes that are provided for us that are numbered with seals that are numbered. We put them in those boxes. We seal the boxes up, and we load them into a cab, you know, to take them, a taxi cab. Special delivery. And there are people from the Office of Elections and other observers that are there to watch those boxes picked up, that are sealed, and the seals are on our checklist. We've got a checklist for that. And there they are. They put them in and they go to Central to where they're going to be counted. There's no way we haven't lost control of those ballots. We've had control of them from the time they entered the facility to the time they leave. They're under our complete control. Scott, what would you add to that? Prior to Election Day, all the machines are tested by official observers. They're members of the public. They serve as the eyes and ears of the public. They come from the political parties, various organizations that have interest in elections. So prior to Election Day, every machine is tested. Once it's tested, it's sealed up with a unique wire hash seal that the numbers recorded. If it ever were tampered with, the seal number would be different. And we deliver it. Everything is done transparently. Everything is sealed with unique numbers. And those numbers are all recorded on a form that it's a carbon form. So if you were going to change it on one part, there's also a copy somewhere else. It looks like this. Is that the ballot now? This is the form that they bring to the form that you check to make. They come with my precinct can because they bring me my precinct can and my ballots. And they bring me those, right? And the team from the Office of Elections does, and they bring it to me and it's filled out with the numbers that he was talking about, the hash numbers. And we verify, yes, it's seal number one, two, three, four, five. Yes, this is seal number one, two, three, four, five, six, you know. And we verify that at the beginning and then at the end, when we seal those ballots back up, we put another hash on there with a number on it. And that we have our last voter and our first voter that are independent of all of us. The League of Women Voters is designed around protecting voting, isn't it? But you guys, you guys are a nonprofit organization. You're not part of the government. No. Scott, do you supervise them and what's the relationship? Well, Terry's just a volunteer who works as an election day official who happens to be a member of the League of Women Voters. Oh, yeah, I got it. And the League supports my activity in that regard because it is part of what the League does. Right now, if people go to our League website, LWV-Hawaii.com. We have listed up on there the information on the state constitutional amendments, the pros and cons of the city charter amendments. Now, we don't advocate which one you're supposed to vote yes or no on. But we have posted, we have great members in our organization. You're a great organization. We are a great organization. Civic organization is what we need in this community. And we want to educate the voters. So go to our website, read about the pros and cons. Don't be an uneducated voter because they are going to mail out a cute little form. I think they're mailing it to all voters. But you can go to their website. There's also one for the Charter Commission. And this, look at it before you get there because when you come in my polling site, I can tell you how to vote. But I can't tell you what to vote. You guys are talking about the polling site. And my recollection is that the votes ultimately, I mean the ballots ultimately go to one of the chambers in the state legislature, which is all spread out, everybody can see what everybody is doing. So it's not like anybody can fool around in the corner. And you're there, Scott, making sure that everybody's doing the whatever. What happens there? So basically, when you vote in the polling place on election day, it gets stored to a memory card that's sealed up. At the end of the day, she spoke about cutting it in front of people, locking it in a box, transporting it to the Capitol. And there, we will accumulate all the cards to give you your results. And that's all done in front of official observers. The chain of custody is all it's maintained throughout the day. And everything is done. And the whole state is there. Neighborhoods come in by plane. There's four counting centers statewide, one in each county. And then after we accumulate the results, then we will audit them. We'll audit the poll books, we'll audit the ballots. Okay. Now, I'll tell you how I'm going to vote. I'm going to vote by mail ballot. And a lot of people are going to vote by mail ballot. And you're sending them out like tomorrow or something, right? It's happening this week, right? I believe the Neighbor Islands have already started mailing out their ballots. And we should have started today, I think. Okay, we started today. And with my ballot, I'm going to get this kind of information. Yeah, that comes from a different organization. That's your charter commission. But I should look at this before I cast my ballot. Because when you get the ballot, those commission amendments, those charter commission amendments, will be on the ballot. Right. They're going to be on there. When you walk into the polling place, or you go to the early voting, or you mail it in, you know? And I encourage people that are confused about the ballot to come to the polling place or go to the early voting site. Because that way you can have some instruction to go with your ballot. But now, for my ballot, what I mailed in, that also winds up in one of those chambers in the legislation. And it's counted there. And it's counted along with all the other ones. So you retain them, they come in in the mail, you retain them, and then you count them along with all the ones that come from the polling places. Yes. And then after the election, we need to retain all the ballots for 22 months, pursuant to federal law. OK. All right. Now, what's the paper trail? The ballot itself is the paper trail. Correct. Because you keep that. But you also have this, what, is it an electronic record or what? For the electronic voting machine. JBC. For the disability, it's a disabled access unit. You vote via electronically by kind of like a touchscreen, but not a touchscreen. There is a trail of paper that's printed out next to it of your votes. That's your paper trail. That's all, it's under lock, lock and key. It's always a seal. And then that gets retained like a ballot. OK. I mean, I don't. And you can't mess up that ballot. Yeah, I don't, I don't see. You can't overvote that ballot. Right. You can overvote your paper ballot. And that will have your ballot be rejected, you know, in the machine when it's counted. But you can't overvote the electronic voting machine. It won't let you. It will force you back to make another decision. So there's an advantage to using that electronic machine, especially on a confusing ballot. Yes. For a complicated ballot. So, you know, Donald Trump says that it's rigged, but it's certainly not rigged in, in, in this aspect of, of the collecting the ballots and voting the ballots and counting the, that's impossible from what you say. Yeah, I don't see where it could be rigged nationwide because we follow the same procedure. Well, even in Hawaii, there it is. Even if you mess up your ballot, let's say you're at my polling site, you go in and your ballot is rejected. And you bring it back out. Now, I tell everybody in my polling site, we try not to touch your ballot at all after we issue it to you. That's your ballot. That's not ours anymore. You know, we don't have any, we don't, we won't leave the building with it, but you can sit there for two hours with it for all I care. But if you look at it and you, you got to have some assistance and you come over and you say, oh, come on, I, I need somebody to help me look at this. I go out and I look, if, if I'm a Democrat, I look for a Republican to come and sit. We identify by party at the beginning of the day. And if we don't have, let's say there are all Democrats in the room, we'll look for the poll watcher that is there from the party. They're, come on over while we discuss Jay's ballot. He's really confused. Now we'll all touch it. Can you answer my question? And now we'll all talk about, well, look at that. It's because you could only vote for two and you voted for three here, Jay. You just fix that, we'll issue you a new ballot. Let's try this. That's very good. You know, so it's, there's, where's the rigging? Have we ever had a rigged vote in Hawaii and a rigged, you know, a prosecution for voter fraud or anything? We had very poor registration fraud back in the 80s, but not for electoral fraud. And also to go on the fact that a voter can take anybody in the booth for assistance that they want as long as it's not their union agent, right? They're not their boss, not their union. That's the law. So you can go in the booth with anybody of your choosing to assist you. And that helps with people to have a second language banner. Sure, that helps. That helps with, now, not every wife's going to let her husband come in with her and we are going to make him stay up. And they can say no. They can say no. And we can enforce that, no. Enforce it all the way. But we also started something new that people could go in the ballot with their cell phone inside the booth and take a picture of themselves with their ballot or whatever, you know, because we really are strict about no electronics in the polling site. But so they started that. That also kind of helps them with getting out, look, I did vote, you know, and if they want, but they can't come out in the middle and say, look, I voted for Donald Trump and I want everybody, I'm taking a picture of myself. Because that would be a secret, a secrecy aspect. But that would be electioneering, yes. We don't allow that. No electioneering within, how many feet? How many feet is it? 200. 200 feet. So nobody can come in the polling place and electioneer in any way. 200 feet away from the polling place. You know, my husband keeps wanting to wear a Bernie shirt. You know, I don't know. You can not wear your Bernie shirt. It doesn't matter. You know, even old politicians can't come in, you know, an old political shirt can't come in either. You know, we're really trying to make it just a happy place for people to come in. Yeah, well, it should be. This is a franchise. This is, you know, the essence of our democracy. We're gonna take a short break when we come back. We're gonna talk about exactly why they should vote and exactly what the mechanics are and, you know, exactly how this affects our democracy. We'll be right back. Understood. Hi, I'm Kili Ikeena, president of the Grassroot Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at two o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at two o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Kili Ikeena. Aloha. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and Aloha and thanks for watching. I wanna talk about the ballot also. Okay, we're back, we're live. We're here learning about voting and hopefully being motivated to vote. With Teri Headey, she's with the League of Women Voters. She's a communications director. When Scott Nago, he is the Chief Elections Officer of the State of Hawaii in the Office of Elections. So is the ballot done? I'm sure it is. Yes. And you know, you test it to make sure that it doesn't mislead anybody about anything. The ballot has been printed. It's been done. A lot of how it's formatted is prescribed by state law. Alphabetical order has to be last name first name, no nicknames, the party has to be on it. So a lot of that is done by, there's really no flexibility. State law really dictates a lot of that stuff. And it's up on your website. If you go to our website, elections.hawaii.gov, you can actually see your ballot if you type in your polling place or your name. You can actually see a sample of your ballot that you will be voting on election day. Oh, because different places, different people, different registrations, I guess, both differently, so the ballots are different. Different state senators, different house reps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very local. Depending on where you live and all that. Depends on where you live. Yeah. So presumably it's easy to do when you get your ballot, then the choices are pretty simple. And in the case of, for example, the mayoral election here in Oahu, everybody votes, right? Yes. Everybody votes. Yeah, right. So there's no nonpartisan, no district, everybody votes. That's your nonpartisan, you know what we have to be careful about? It's saying nonpartisan race, okay? We call municipal races, because I don't know if there's one on this one, but there was a few years back, a nonpartisan party. And it was running like as a... That's confusing, isn't it? So yeah, so when you get your instructions, that our ballot issuing station had to be very careful to not say, this is a nonpartisan race. This is a municipal race, where your party doesn't matter, because if you say nonpartisan party, you might confuse them about, there's a home shopping party, I think. Yeah, I remember that one, too. American shopping. American shopping party, yeah. So that's where some of the confusion sometimes comes in. Yeah, simply by the name of the party. Yes. And the national side, we have, of course, the president candidates, presidential candidates are running, and everybody votes for that, correct? And we have some delegations running. What are the delegation races this year? So you basically have U.S. Senate, your U.S. Rep, and depending on the district, you're gonna have your state senators, state house. And the replacement for Rep, Mark, to Kai. Yeah, so a special election for a congressional district, one, and then depending on your district, you might have a council race, and then you have the mayor's race. Okay, but it doesn't sound all that complicated, and... You just gotta make sure you vote for no more than allowed. Yeah, it tells you how many... Vote for no more than one, vote for no more than three. Then mark your ballot clearly, color in the whole block, but not go outside of it. So you have to use a special pen? Just a regular pen. A regular pen to color in a square block or around a square block. And just don't go outside the lines, you have to stay in line. So it's just little things that might get your ballot kicked out like that that you wanna be careful of. Okay, well, yeah, what happens if you make a mistake and the ballot is not properly filled out? Piece of cake if you're at my polling site. You're gonna walk in because you got ballot A and B, right? So you put in A and it goes in, it goes, oh, yay, you know. Then you put in B and it kicks back out. Well, you turn around and you go back to your ballot issuing station. And like I said, you can ask for assistance or you can say, oh, no, I know what I did. I can only vote for one person. They will destroy the first one. And they will void, they will just put one line through that number. They will void out, they will issue you two more ballots, void the one that went in, the A ballot and then give you the B ballot and spoil the B ballot and put that in a special on-vote that goes to the city clerk that's gonna count all our spoiled ballots. We account for every single ballot. Oh, that's sort of a control mechanism. It's a control. It can't be counted twice. It can't be counted twice. If you come in and you've got your absentee ballot, you can vote your absentee ballot at any polling location. You don't have to go to your precinct 4203, you know, that's your, oh, you don't have to go there. You can drop that off anywhere. But if you wanna surrender that ballot at your polling site, I'll call up the city clerk and they will void out your absentee ballot right there. I'll make an entrance in my log, we'll put an entrance in the poll book and we'll issue you a paper ballot or let you go to the electronic voting machine, which everyone- Now, suppose I vote by mail and I screw it up somehow. Is there a number there that I can call? Yeah, you can call the clerk's office and ask for a replacement ballot. Okay. Just tell them you didn't mistake and you wanna issue a replacement ballot and they'll send you another one. Now, suppose I get my mail ballot, but for some reason I don't send it in. And here we are on election day, November 8th. What do I do? Can I go down to the polls and vote? Yeah, you have two options. You can vote it, drop it off at the polling place or you can go down to the polls and vote in the polls. It may take you a little longer because they have to verify that you didn't mail your ballot in. And we have to call. They have a whole- Oh, you're gonna call people- They have a bunch of people. Get the mail ballots and make sure I do the same thing. And control, right? They'll get a hold of the city clerk and they'll go, nope, he did not mail that in. Okay, we'll void that one out. Okay, good. Well, I mean, to me, mailing it in is so much easier than having to go down there. And we want to, that's why we're there to help you vote. We don't care how you vote at that point. I mean, I couldn't, that's why there's no campaigning because we don't care. We're excited to see first-time voters. Oh my goodness, we had some first-time voters last time. They had, I think right now we had a really poor primary turnout, but we had what, 740,000 people registered to vote. And some of those are first-time voters. And when they, we get really excited when they come in the vote. First-time voters traditionally younger or older? Younger, younger. Younger, a lot of the younger people. The millennials, that sort of thing. Because we had a very strong- What's the voting age? Third, oh, 18, yeah. But you can register at 16, but you can only vote at 18. Okay, well, some important people know that. So they don't feel that they're too early or too late. So, you know, you mentioned something, Terry, I would like to spend some time on it. And that is, you know, Hawaii's very special voting rate. So in the primary in September, 34%. Correct. That's really low. I mean, it's nauseatingly low. Why did that happen? What is it in the air, the water, whatever it is that makes us vote 34%? You know, we want to make sure that everybody who can vote has the opportunity to vote. I mean, you can register fairly easy. You can, there's many options to register. There's many options to vote. You can walk in prior to, you can go to the polling places on election day, or you can get a mail ballot. You can even get a permanent mail ballot, mail to your house every election. So we want to make sure that anybody who wants to take advantage of voting has the opportunity. You want to make it as easy as possible. That's great. I mean, my own experience is, it is very easy to vote in Hawaii. It's easy to vote. Everybody wants you to vote. They're very welcoming when you go to the polling place. But 34%. Why the lack of enthusiasm? Why is that? Why is that? Is it something in school or not in school? I think for one thing, they dismiss third party candidates very, that causes some of the young people that shuts down debate for them. That shuts down a lot of their enthusiasm. That's a mistake. I think we have a huge education problem, like you were saying. They just don't realize how important it is. Like 34% in our primary should be a crime, because in our state, we're so heavily democratic party-leaning. But people in our state are law-abiding. But you... They are. And more than many other states. They do the right thing. They do the right thing. They want to do their duty as citizens and perform their civic obligations. And yet, 34%. I don't understand it. I wonder if you guys have a handle on what makes us dwell in that area of percentage. I don't know if 34% is necessarily unique to Hawaii. Low turnout is not unique to Hawaii. It's a nationwide trend that 34% puts us at roughly about 31st of the 50 states in terms of turnout. So it's not really the bottom. We're about right average. But I mean, so it's not unique to Hawaii to have low voter turnout. But they felt like in voter influence, we were like 46 out of 51 places that vote. I guess they were including trust territories. But that, because of the way we have... 46 out of 50. 46 out of 51, you know, places that vote. So where is that then? That's the influence. That's what the voter influence is like. We're that low on the chart as far as influencing. We're not like these swing states. Well, let's talk national for a minute. I think it's good to see this in a national context, especially in the election this year, which is stressing the whole system. You know, democracy requires citizen participation. It doesn't work without citizen participation. And when it doesn't work, and you go back to square one where it didn't work, you're really asking for trouble, I mean, right at home. And so do people understand this to potential voters, registrable voters understand this? Have we given up civics in high school? Have we given up the courses that teach people this? We have a program that we work with the high schools to get them registered at 16, actually. And if the school wants to participate, we'll provide them literature. We'll provide them the form where they can register. And we don't get that much response from that. We had a record low in the turnout, but we had a record surge in registration at 740,000 registered voters. You know, that's more than in the past two presidential elections. What could possibly motivate them to stay away from the polls when they've had that enormous, you know? And it, again, I don't think- All things considered, do you have some estimate of what percentage will vote on November 8th? You have something, but be a personal estimate, some notion of whether this is gonna be a banner year with a lot of voters or maybe a banner year with not enough voters. My precinct itself was like 39 points something in the primary. I mean, we had- It's better than 34% of- It's better than 34, but that ain't pretty. That's sad. I mean, you got people weeping in their ballot box. Well, let's talk civics for a minute. First of all, you know, this is also part of your civic duty. And we talked before the show about, you know, it's not only voting, it's voting smart. And, you know, we have voters who vote stupid, but that's not a good idea for anyone. And you have to spend a little time and do your duty and prepare and read and know what's gonna be on the ballot. This is not easy, you know, you have to make choices. And it's not covered in the media, you know? And if you guys wanna come back, we can do a show on every single thing that they're gonna be asked to vote on in the amendments, both city and state constitution. If you go to the League of Women Voter Hawaii website, LWV-Hawaii.com, we put up pros and cons on these. We don't tell you how to vote it, like I said, but it gives you the pros and cons on these amendments. So at least, you know, they can, if they read it and can't make up their mind, whether it's a good or bad thing, at least go over there and take a look. Yeah, that's helpful, because you need recommendations. Yeah, yeah, we're not gonna tell you how to vote, but we're gonna tell you what we think is the pro of this and what is the con of this. Yeah, okay, that's not a recommendation. We're just telling you an analysis, this is what we see as a pro. We need thoughtful voting on these things. Otherwise, the language of the amendment can confuse people and then they make bad choices and make, you know, collective bad choices and then it isn't a good idea. Well, for one thing, one of the things I think is like a term limit that they discuss. Okay, now, people think that's important to us. Go out there and look at that. If somebody's doing a good job, do you wanna give them more time? Or do you want them, you know, to give you, you know, less time, nope, that's enough. They do it in this amount of time and that's it. So is the press doing its job on this? Oh, no. I've seen a lot of coverage on this. I see an I vote commercial. I like that. Where they did. On single issues. On single issues. Oh, well, one of the stations was doing a question a day and covering it on their newscasts and I think that's more than what we've had in the past. That was good. Let me hear that. Which station was it? I think it was Hawaii News Now. Good for them. I did see them too. They had both mayoral candidates up there. They had a lot, you know, even when there was Peter Karla running. So they did try to, I think, but it's hard. I think I've seen Malika Lincoln, you know, I think I was really happy with her. She's really young and, you know, with those younger people, with those younger people, I'm seeing a much better stab at good journalism. Okay, we only have a minute or two left and I wanted to give you guys both an opportunity to, I'm sure you think about this because you work in this every day to address the people, the registrable electorate out there and tell them why in our great nation, in our great state, why they should be getting out there to register and vote. So can you go first, Terry? It's Terry Headey telling you how she really feels. Oh, I really feel. Making a pitch for you to get off your duff and vote. And you should get out there and vote. I do not understand why you can look at 1.3 trillion dollars in student debt. There's an issue you might wanna vote on. What about I was just talking about term limits? Don't you wanna have some input on our city council? How things are running? I mean, I just cannot understand how people have been beaten, have been killed, have been over, they wanted to vote. They used to grill black men on how many angels on the head of a pen are you smart enough to vote? You gotta know the answer to that. We want to make sure that you get out and go vote. We have spent many thousands, millions of lives creating this democracy for you, for you the voters. This is, the price has been high for your franchise. It's your turn, get out and do something. Scott, what would you add to that? You think about it every day, I'm sure. As I said earlier, we make the services available. I mean, there's numerous ways to register to vote. There's numerous ways to vote. It's just a matter of you making the conscious decision to actually exercise your right to vote and take advantage of one of those services we provide. Thank you for providing those services. Thank you. It's nice to have you here, it's nice to see what you do. Thank you to people like Terry who actually work in the polls. We believe in it. Almost I feel like I should vote at the ballot place just so I can get to see you operate. Oh, come on over. You may not be in my district though. I got the A team. I've got the A team. Come on over. I got the BD on the A team and it's got to go. More for some elections. Thank you so much, you guys.