ELECTIONS COMMISSION MEETING - VIDEO - WED. MAY 6 at 10:00 AM

[Punatang]

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You must not remember.  As I stated before in the DOGE thread, I am new to these issues and really do not have a theory. The latest fact findings of The Hawaii Elections Commission are laid out in this new (3/11/26) report which was presented today in the meeting which is the subject of this thread.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cvRrEhz...view?pli=1

If you care to amuse yourself attempting to debunk the bipartisan report linked above, and you provide some background as to your credentials and at least some documentation that supports your theories as they relate to the specific allegations made in the report linked above, I would read that. If it's just the opinions of an anonymous rando, in a Snoopy costume, on Punaweb, then I'll try to get back to it when I have a great deal of excess time.  As a wise man once said, "some of us have to make hay when the sun is shining." In addition to that, I have a lot of pent up emotions I'm working through and it can be very time consuming. LOL

Anyone who didn't catch today's meeting may view it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/jzvgGtK-Gew

It is a doozy and if you click the settings gear wheel at the bottom of your screen (hover over the word "ZOOM") you may adjust the playback speed to zip through faster.

   
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[HiloJulie]

"It is a doozy"  

It sure was! All 5 hours, 40 minutes and 34 seconds. And as always, my hero "Pikachu" never disappoints, testifying two separate times on two separate items. Never mind what he said, it's irrelevant, but his performance was one to endear the masses. Even the guy (I can't remember his name) that got cut off twice - just a bang-up job of utter professionalism, but boy they sure are convincing that something underhanded is a foot here because a few people keep saying there is. I'm sold.

And silly me, I thought the collective mindset on display by this Commission during the whole 5 hours, 40 minutes and 34 seconds of this taxpayer paid for meeting was only limited to Puna. Imagine my surprise to see it is not only Puna, but all of Hawaii.

At any event Tang, I think you finally found something you can really sink your teeth into here! Go get 'em tiger!

[ironyak]

Thankfully the Elections Commission can only make recommendations and as HNN reported on Nov. 4, 2025: "Senate Judiciary chair Karl Rhoads, who would have jurisdiction over changing election law, said he believes the chances the legislature will approve the changes are zero."

It is clear to many though that the Elections Commission needs to be fixed so as to not be used by partisan hacks to sow distrust in the electoral process.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/11/heres-...-on-track/
"By Chad Blair - November 23, 2025

The state Elections Commission has gone off the rails. Lawmakers and others have some ideas for fixing it but it won’t be easy.

After more than two years of highly contentious marathon public meetings, it seemed improbable that the Hawaiʻi Elections Commission could possibly top itself.

And yet, the Oct. 29 meeting went where no other state board had gone before.

As usual, it was fueled by dozens of angry testifiers who signed up for the Zoom meeting.
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The commission “has found itself in a partisan fight that is not native or needed in this state,” said Camron Hurt, executive director of Common Cause Hawaiʻi, who spoke at the same press conference and was referring to what he believes are mainland MAGA intrusions into local elections.
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Politics continues to color the work of the Elections Commission and calls for reform put the process for selecting commissioners once again front and center. Civil Beat columnist Beth Fukumoto, a former House minority leader who had a hand in naming commissioners, last week wrote that Hawaiʻi needs “clearer standards” for Elections Commission appointments.

“We should expect that anyone making these appointments is looking for a core set of skills, conducts a simple interview, and documents their process,” she wrote.
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Curtis declined an interview with Civil Beat. But in an email Friday he said tensions and the length of commission meetings “are functions of confrontational politics originating in the White House.”

Curtis also noted that last legislative session a proposal to require Senate confirmation of commissioners stalled in committee. The bill was Tam’s. Six of the nine House Republicans voted against it and two of the other three skipped the vote.
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But Tam also suggested that it is the appointments made by Republicans that have led to turmoil.

“I think a better question is, why are the minority members putting election conspiracy theorists on this commission?”" (more at link)

[Punatang]

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Thank you for that biased interpretation of some peoples' biased opinions.

Now for the data:

If one bothers to actually skim the few pages of very serious investigative findings at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cvRrEhz...view?pli=1

...and then take a few moments to peek at who the author/investigators actually are at:

https://www.youtube.com/live/jzvgGtK-Gew

You will discover the truth about who...

Dylan Andrion, Commissioner
James Apana, Commissioner
Jason Sabas, Commissioner
Jennifer Hunt (Non-Commission Member)
Permitted Interaction Group (PIG)

...actually are, in reality, and you will be able to easily debunk the preposterous, Civilbeat lie,  that this is "non-native" and expose the civil beat slop for the ridiculous hack job that it is.

Because it's easier to parrot Civilbeat's lying and attacking native, civilian volunteers and participate in perpetuating the Mauna Kea snowball-ing, bipartisan doubt about the election processes in Hawaii, than it is to just count some Big Island envelopes and put it all to rest.  

The conspiracy theory is the preposterous idea that the people who prepared the report, as a group, have ulterior motives.

The people who are truly creating doubt about our elections, are the ones desperately resisting just doing very right and very simple things to put it all to rest.

If and when the shoe is on the other foot, and someday it probably will be, there will be no end to the howling on Punaweb about findings in a bipartisan, native, report such as this:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cvRrEhz...view?pli=1

...earnestly submitted by folks ike this:

Dylan Andrion, Commissioner
James Apana, Commissioner
Jason Sabas, Commissioner
Jennifer Hunt (Non-Commission Member)
Permitted Interaction Group (PIG)
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[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

just count some Big Island envelopes and put it all to rest. 

There are things that cost money, that are an obvious waste of resources and time.
Is a highway intersection safer with a stoplight rather than a stop sign?  Can you find statistics that there are less accidents at stoplights than those with stop signs?  Or should we spend a fortune and install stoplights at every intersection to prove the point and “put it all to rest?”

Some things are self evident, except to those who have a nefarious agenda to promote.
As we’ve seen in numerous other instances, once the claim is proved baseless, the election conspiracy actors just move on to another vote conspiracy elsewhere.  Except when their candidate wins.  Funny how that’s the case, every single time.

[Punatang]

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Some things are self evident, except to those who have a nefarious agenda to promote.

There - fixed it.

Edge since you have somehow managed to make Punaweb's favorite new celebrity, "Pikachu", sound incredibly coherent and unbiased, I am going to drop some classic Pikachu in the protest thread that that you and all Orange He'e Haters, will love.  You will witness that Pikachu could not be more anti-MAGA and anti-Orange He'e, and yet he demands, month after month, that the envelopes be counted. 

Since you have accused these good people...

Dylan Andrion, Commissioner

James Apana, Commissioner
Jason Sabas, Commissioner
Jennifer Hunt (Non-Commission Member)
Permitted Interaction Group (PIG)
+ Pikachu

...of nefariosity, can you please tell us what their nefarious motives are?  Are they all the same or does each person have some unique nefarious master, conspiracy plan?
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[randomq]

Punatang, I see a bunch of accusations in that PIG report, but no evidence.

Findings:
1. "unable to obtain documentation demonstrating that all counties in uniformity maintained reconciled daily records"

My experience is working with Hawaii County Elections. I know that all of those numbers are maintained and made available to the press and the public. In fact, the note below suggests that they had trouble getting records from Maui and Oahu, not Hawaii County:

"City and County of Honolulu no documentation provided. Maui County no documentation provided and advised by
legal counsel to not engage further with PIG, stating that the Elections Commission does not have jurisdiction over
the county."

Without the PIG showing us what information they actually requested, received, and from whom, this is a baseless claim.

2. Alleges chain of custody documentation is incomplete, because envelopes are not tracked before scanned into the voter registration system. From my experience in Hawaii County this is not accurate. Once mail is received the process of scanning it in, time-stamping it, and beginning signature verification takes place almost immediately, because it is a manually intensive process and best done during the day when all staff is present. Drop box / voter service center / office pickups are counted and verified with a witness present, sealed in metal cans with numbered tamper-evident seals, and re-counted when they arrive back at the Elections office.

The last few days of the election when there is huge mail volume, observers ride with the county employees that pick up the mail directly from the USPS. It would be fair to argue that *all* mail pickups should have observers, or that the mail should be secured and sealed in giant totes whenever picked up directly from USPS, or the volume of mail weighed on scales at both ends, etc. But it is also fair to argue that there has been no evidence of fraud, and anyway the mail has been out of the chain of custody (within USPS and private homes) for weeks, so why does it suddenly matter on the 5 minute trip from the post office to the election office.

3. Chain of custody from day one

In practice this is done (here on Big Island). The county elections offices manage voter rolls, remove dead people and felons, remove people that moved to or registered to vote in other states, update addresses for people that have moved, etc. All that information is updated in SVRS, along with tracking barcodes for every ballot packet and return envelope to be printed. That voter roll is then sent to whichever printing company wins the contract for steps 1 and 2, and that printing company assembles the ballot packets and scans the outside of the finished packets to ensure all packets were printed properly, there were no duplicates, etc. That is the beginning of the tracking with the status set to "mailed". Voters that are concerned about tracking their ballot can sign up to know when the ballots are mailed, and when they are received back based on these barcodes.

For step 3, USPS does not track to the individual mail piece or use the elections barcode. They have an "Intelligent Mail barcode" but, unlike packages, it is not guaranteed to be scanned, as most first class mail is sorted and routed by the tray, not by the individual piece. If you actually wanted "chain of custody" for USPS, you would have to pay for registered mail for every single piece. The cost would be insane. And it would require hundreds of thousands of signatures on receipt, with working people having to go sign for and collect their ballot mail from the post office.

Steps 4 and 5, as outlined above, are sealed in metal cans with numbered seals. Everything from this point on (and all the mail once received at the office) is physically sealed with numbered seals. There's a form called a "Seal Certification Form" that requires two people to sign off on the time, date, and seal number when sealed, and on the other side two people are required to certify when the seal is broken and to verify the number and that it was not tampered with. So those seal cert forms exist, in sealed boxes sent to the state election warehouse after the election is complete.

Step 6 is done digitally with the timestamped, barcoded, received in SVRS envelopes. It is all tracked, and any extra or missing envelopes would be rejected or flagged.

Steps 7 and 8 are all done using sealed cages/boxes at each step, with observers witnessing all sealings, transfers, and unsealings.


4. "USPS Mail Processing Provides an Exact Count of Returned Ballot Envelopes" is a lie that Cushnie and Andrion keep repeating.

USPS does not guarantee tracking or scanning of individual first class mail pieces. Even under ordinary circumstances first class mail is usually tracked at the tray or higher level. During elections, especially closer to election day, USPS pulls ballot mail from the mail stream for direct delivery, so it doesn't route through Oahu and miss the deadline. For example, on election eve, all mail must be in the county election divisions hands by 7pm. The last mail trucks returning from their routes that day are literally looking through the mail for ballot mail, and handing it to the USPS supervisor to give to the elections workers. It may not even be scanned in or billed, as there simply isn't time, and the priority is ensuring people's votes are received and counted.

5. Future improvements. My experience is our county is already doing this. We already have sealed containers, seal cert forms, and counts of envelopes. That is how the legally mandated reconciliation, over/under counts, and determination of recounts is done. It's all witnessed by observers from all the political parties present.

Their conclusions are flawed:

"counties did not provide verifiable daily ballot counts in uniformity or at all"

- as above, they did not provide proof of this. What did they ask for, from whom, and what did they receive? They provided no evidence.

"required records under HAR §3-177-453 were not satisfied for the 2024 election"

- again, an allegation with no evidence.

"reconciliation between ballot envelopes collected and ballots counted cannot be independently verified"

- this is a lie. Reconciliation *is* independently verified at the counting centers, by county and state officials, volunteers, and observers from the political parties. They get to see the county's envelope numbers and the state's ballot numbers, and monitor the whole process of opening, counting, auditing, etc, that verifies those numbers.

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As to counting the envelopes and "putting it to rest", I think I would be for it if the commissioners were intellectually honest. But they aren't. They have been publicly corrected about the misuse of mail billing records for accurate accounting of ballot mail, and yet Cushnie still lies, calling them the county's numbers, and saying the county's numbers don't match the states. They also cannot tell you where in between all the county and state checks and balances these 19k extra ballots/votes could have been slipped in without detection, so they don't even have a working theory. The political parties have had the complete list of voters that voted in the election for over a year, and have not identified 19 voters that didn't really vote, never mind 19,000.

So ultimately you have a conspiracy theory with no proof, no feasible method for occurring, pushed by unqualified people, who continue to lie about it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's tempting to count the envelopes just to put egg on their faces, but I doubt they would show shame or apologize anyway. Maybe if the accusing commissioners vow to resign if they are proven wrong it would be worth it. And if the legislature actually requires qualifications and confirmation for new commissioners, so we don't get any more ignorant or malicious members...

[Punatang]

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Thank you for providing the meeting minutes. 

Anyone who has been paying attention has already heard the Lawyer Ostercamp's opinions regurgitated enough times, including on April Fools Day. 

For all I know, some or even most of it may be correct, but, he has clearly failed to sell it, probably in no small way due to the fact that many have difficulty trusting lawyers for some reason. As a result, a tipping point has been reached.

As to counting the envelopes and "putting it to rest", I think I would be for it - Rando

The Hawaii State Elections Commission is accepting applications for the position of Chair, Elections Commission, State of Hawaii - https://elections.hawaii.gov/wp-content/...-03-16.pdf

In the meantime, whether you think you are for it or not, that train has already left the station.  The people who matter, are for it.

A majority, of the majority democrat Hawaii Elections Commission, has voted to count the envelopes.  Even Michael Curtis, the Commission Chair sees the wisdom in restoring trust, as is overwhelmingly demanded by The People.  He voted "aye" along with the majority. This is what democracy looks like.

The only question now is whether Scott Nago etc al. will be intellectually honest, and voluntarily comply, or if The DOJ will ultimately get involved and force compliance.

This ends when the envelopes have been counted.
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[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

This ends when the envelopes have been counted.

Promise?

Or more likely will an even greater number of fake election conspiracies pop up on the world’s largest wack-a-voter-mole playing field? The truth about election fraud is that everyone who can count, even Republicans, agree it is almost as rare as noncitizen Bigfoots casting a ballot. There are statistics to prove it. It’s not about discovering anything. It’s only about creating doubt.

[randomq]

I suspect the commission will have to convince a judge or lawmakers if they want access to the records sooner than later. Based on all the allegations of mass voter fraud being disproved in every other state, and the commission's inability to explain how the alleged fraud could even be possible given the existing election checks and balances, they have slim odds.

And yet, if they are eventually granted access to the envelopes, and find enough for every vote cast, shouldn't there be consequences for all the false accusations?