Elections Commission PIG finds missing ballot accounting, public demands envelope audit

A permitted-interaction-group report presented at the March 11 meeting warned that county election offices failed to produce uniform, verifiable daily accounting of ballot envelopes for the 2024 general election, undermining the ability of outside parties to confirm turnout and reconciliation.

"Counties did not provide verifiable daily ballot accounting," the report read aloud by Commissioner Dylan Andrion, which summarized the PIG's findings that documentation for envelopes collected from drop boxes and returned through the U.S. Postal Service was incomplete or inconsistent and that reconciliation relied too heavily on entries in the statewide voter registration system rather than independently verifiable records.

The PIG recommended six steps, including establishing a statewide definition of when chain of custody begins, requiring standardized daily reconciliation records, requiring the Office of Elections to adopt forms and seal-certification procedures, and reconciling ballot-envelope totals with independent USPS business-reply-mail processing counts.

Public testimony following the report was sharply critical of current practice. Brennan Cabral, an observer who testified while on a ventilator, said: "We don't have any accountability, no transparency, no integrity in our election process." Jamie Detwiler, an elections observer, urged a practical, low-cost hand count of envelopes with bipartisan volunteers to resolve an island-specific discrepancy of 19,042 envelopes reported by county collection records versus statewide tallies.

Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago told the commission the statewide voter registration system was the source for some of the tally figures and said the office would work with legal guidance on how and when audits could be conducted.

Commissioners recorded a motion instructing Nago to conduct or to facilitate an audit; that motion passed by roll call. Commissioners also requested a written legal opinion from the Attorney General about whether, and under what conditions, ballots and related materials can be examined during the federal 22-month retention period.

The meeting produced no immediate re-tabulation of ballots or envelopes, but commissioners and multiple members of the public urged expedited action and proposed that volunteer hand counts be supervised by Office of Elections staff so the public can see whether county collection logs and postal receipts reconcile with state count totals.

Next steps recorded at the meeting included a direction to the chief elections officer to engage with the commission on audit timing and a request for a formal study of standardized chain-of-custody documents.