This week was mostly — but not totally — about mopping up from the Aug. 11 primary.

To that end, we did a major post-mortem on the Civil Beat Poll we’d published in early August. That one nailed Tulsi Gabbard‘s 20-point win over Mufi Hannemann in the 2nd Congressional District race even though other polls and pundits had Hannemann winning handily.

But we didn’t get it right in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary. We said it was too close to call but Mazie Hirono came in 17 points ahead of Ed Case. Ouch.

We spent several days huddling with our pollsters, other pollsters, polling experts and others to try to figure out what went wrong and how not to do that again. The answer is complex and involves cultural issues that may be particular to Hawaii. But it’s also a fascinating issue that you can read more about here.

Another intriguing issue that emerged after the election has to do with what may be the practice by some politicians of rounding up ballots from their districts and mailing them in. Honolulu City Council member Romy Cachola narrowly won a seat in the state House with the help of absentee mail-in ballots. An elderly woman in his neighborhood told us of being intimidated by Cachola to mark her ballot with his name then pressured into giving him the ballot so he could mail it in himself.

Cachola denies ever watching anyone mark their ballot but does acknowledge that he sometimes feels compelled to explain the ballot to his constituents and says they make many mistakes.

Still, the issue of soliciting and collecting mail-in ballots from voters is something we’ll be looking into more closely in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, in case you need to catch up on the election results or other news, here are 10 more stories:

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