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Scott Nago has been running Hawaii elections since 2010. His tenure has sometimes been tempestuous, what with Oahu ballot shortages in 2012, hundreds of uncounted Maui votes in 2014 and tropical storm-related confusion affecting the primary voting on the Big Island that same year.

But election controversy has reached a whole new level in the Trump era, and the islands are not immune. In an interview edited for length and clarity, Nago talks about what’s new this election year, including the wave of suspicion about whether elections are conducted properly here.

This is the first year that your office is producing an online voters guide. How’s that going?

Since the close of candidate filing, we’ve been preparing the voter guide. The guide is being translated into Chinese, Ilocano, Tagalog and Olelo Hawaii, but it should be ready by mid-July, ahead of when the ballots go out.

One of the things we’ve worked on, which was a challenge for us, was making it interactive so voters can actually go to our website, type in their home address and candidates on their specific ballot will pop up for them. That way they won’t have to wade through all the candidates that aren’t on their ballot.

Can people request paper copies of the guide?

No, if you want to see paper copies, you would have to go to a public library. So you’re going to have to download a PDF copy of the entire guide, but then you can type in your address and see the candidates that will appear on your ballot.

This will be the third election cycle involving all-mail balloting in Hawaii. How is that working?

The last time we had a polling place election was in 2018. And even then more voters actually used absentee ballots than voted in person on Election Day.

You have to go back to 2010 to find a time when more people voted on Election Day in person. So it wasn’t as big of an undertaking as one would think, because like I said, the trend has been, more people have been voting by mail. 

Has it had much impact on turnout?

There’s different factors that go into turnout. For example, 2020 was the first time we’ve conducted all-mail voting in Hawaii, and it just so happened to be the highest turnout.

But I don’t know if I could attribute that to vote-by-mail, because in 2020 we had Covid. And we had a presidential election. It does provide ease of access for voting.

So pivoting a little bit, over the years the word “embattled” often appears in front of your name in news articles. In your earlier years as elections chief, there was the controversy over a shortage of ballots on Oahu once and the Maui uncounted ballots and the Big Island storm confusion. But what we have now is a different beast, isn’t it?

Elections have a lot of moving parts. It does take a lot to stay on top of it all.

But I think we can all agree that this controversy is a nationwide trend. You’ve seen it across the nation, especially since this is a presidential election. What we’re seeing on the mainland as far as criticism of election officials is the same thing you’re seeing here, unfortunately.

I would say that was not the case four years ago. What you saw on the mainland wasn’t necessarily translating to what was happening here. Unfortunately, what you see on the news happening on the mainland as far as it relates to voting and election officials being intimidated, those kind of things seem to happen here, which is unfortunate, because that’s just not what I thought would ever happen here.

One example of the national controversy spilling over into Hawaii was the lawsuit challenging how your office conducted the routine audit of results in 2022 with digital images of paper ballots instead of the paper ballots themselves. A judge , but the state Republican Party chair just wrote that the audits this year be done strictly with actual paper ballots. Do you foresee making any change in the auditing procedure?

The audit is actually there to confirm the election process. It’s not a recount. So it simply alerts election officials whether or not the system is working properly.

We have to conduct the audit prior to certifying the election. However, the audit itself is not the final certification of elections, and the voters still have the ability to file a challenge if they still do not believe in the elections.

Clearly the state Republican Party doesn’t like how these audits are happening. Is the process really any different with digital images of the paper ballots instead of the paper ballots themselves?

They’re exact replicas of the paper ballots. When we went through the audit process in 2022, some of the official observers asked to see the actual paper ballots in some cases. When we pulled up the actual paper ballot — because we we can track the actual paper ballot and go back to it — it was exactly the same as how it showed up on screen.

So it’s really an exact replica of the paper ballot, and it just allows us to conduct the audit faster, more efficiently.

There has to be finality in elections. If we did conduct the audit with all paper ballots, and it took us a few weeks, people would question what’s going on there, too.

You just recently got reappointed by the Elections Commission, but it was a 5-4 vote that came after a pretty grueling public hearing with a lot of Trumpian overtones. One of the new commissioners has been an outspoken critic of your office in terms of election integrity. Is it fair to say you’re going to be looking at this same landscape for the foreseeable future?

We’re just concentrating on providing the election services to the voters and ensure that people have access to voting and providing that if they want to vote they can vote and just providing that service.

So with all that criticism, all we are really focused on is conducting a secure, honest 2024 election. And that will be the same for all future elections, too.

“To label them as corrupt just because you don’t believe in election results, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

How is all this skepticism playing out for for you and your office?

It’s just something that we have to deal with.

One of the issues is there’s a lot of disinformation. So we would have to actually work to correct that disinformation, making sure that the correct information is out there, making sure to remind voters that if they want to get the most accurate election information, they should go to a trusted source, which would be a .gov website, not from social media, because there is a lot of mistrust and bad information out there.

The elections are much bigger than just this office or the county clerks’ offices. We rely on a lot of volunteers, about 500 volunteers statewide, to conduct the elections. A lot of them have been doing it a lot longer than I have, coming back year after year, election after election, because they believe in doing the right thing. And then to see their integrity questioned …

These are people that are in the community. These are your neighbors. These are your family members. These are people you maybe go to church with or you see them in the supermarket. And there’s all this noise. To label them as corrupt just because you don’t believe in election results, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Is the “noise” affecting your ability to sign up volunteers?

So far it doesn’t look like it has, but it does have the potential to affect it. You’ve seen on the mainland where Election Day officials have been targeted.

We don’t need as many anymore since we don’t have all the polling places. A lot of the volunteers are in their 70s or 80s now, and that generation is slowly retiring.

What about the other employees in your office? Not that it’s easy on you, but, you have a lot of experience now in this role. How does that affect some of your employees?

I’m sure it affects them. It affects me.

But they’re professionals about it. Everybody knows what they’ve got to do. And that’s what we’re doing, making sure, like I said, that the 2024 election happens.

You work for the state Elections Commission, which is almost guaranteed to have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats because of how eight of them are appointed by certain legislators. And they choose the ninth member, the chair. Right now that’s Michael Curtis, who is also a Republican but he actually just issued a letter in support of you.

Oh, that’s nice of him.

So this doesn’t always go down straight along party lines, does it?

No, I mean, if anybody saw what we do, you would see that. Basically, we’re working toward the same goal and that’s a secure election. But what they want is what we want.

Everybody wants an honest election. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want that.

Read the June 25 letter of support written by Michael Curtis here: