Questions about whether the 2024 state elections were invalid may go to the state Supreme Court.
Three people — Ralph Cushnie, a member of the Hawai‘i Elections Commission, Tara Malia Gregory, a candidate for the Honolulu City Council, and resident Douglas Pasnik — filed last week a petition requesting the Hawai‘i Supreme Court to compel election officials to properly account for 2024 ballot data before the 2026 election is certified.
Cushnie has argued that Hawai‘i County mishandled ballots during the 2024 election. He has alleged that the county’s own records for the number of mail-in ballots submitted to county dropboxes vary wildly from USPS receipts, indicating a discrepancy of more than 19,000 ballots.
In an election where Mayor Kimo Alameda defeated incumbent Mitch Roth by less than 9,000 votes, that discrepancy could have major consequences.
At the same time, Cushnie has also alleged that no county in the state has maintained any verifiable record of their ballots’ “chain of custody,” the procedures for what happens to ballots after they are submitted, who handles them and how they are counted.
According to the petition to the Supreme Court, various investigations by the commission “documented absence, incompleteness, inconsistency, preservation limitations, or unavailability of portions of election records” during ballot reconciliation, the process by which ballots are accounted for.
The petition includes a litany of questionable practices by Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i county officials, including retroactive changes to ballot counts without proper documentation, unverifiable electronic records, and certification of the 2024 election results even with open legal challenges.
The petition therefore questions whether the state can legally certify the results of an election without properly conducting the ballot reconciliation process as outlined in state statutes.
The petition concludes by requesting that the Supreme Court clarify what specific records are required in the state statutes concerning ballot reconciliation, and require that the Hawai‘i Elections Commission and Chief Election Officer Scott Nago complete reconciliation using those records before certifying the results of the 2026 election.
The petition emphasizes repeatedly that it is not seeking to challenge the outcome of the 2024 election, to remove anyone from power, or to prove the existence of fraud. But with the 2026 election imminent, the petition notes that the questionable practices of the 2024 election could be repeated.
“The 2026 election cycle is presently underway, candidate filing has closed, ballots will soon be prepared and distributed, and another statewide certification process will occur,” the petition read. “The statutory certification framework challenged in this proceeding will therefore be applied again within a defined and imminent election cycle.”
Nago had previously told Aloha State Daily that he is willing to investigate the 2024 election, but federal laws require the Office of Elections to maintain and preserve all records of an election for 22 months afterward — a requirement, he said, that allows federal investigators to review the records during that time.
Once that deadline passes in late September, state authorities can review election records at their discretion, although given that the Office of Elections will be gearing up for the 2026 election, Nago said a state review would likely be delayed.
However, Nago also told ASD that the Hawai‘i Supreme Court could also order the records to be unsealed early, although the petition does not include that in its list of requests.
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