Maui Council Candidate Wants State Supreme Court To Void Election
UPDATED: Kelly King, who lost to Tom Cook by 97 votes, seeks a new election, arguing that not every vote was counted in the Nov. 5 contest.
The former chair of the Maui County Council on Monday asked the Hawaii Supreme Court to order a new election for the South Maui district seat.
Kelly King lost the general election to Tom Cook. In 2020, she defeated Cook. But the result this year was 41.6% to 41.4%, or 26,423 for Cook and 26,326 for King — a difference of only 97 votes.
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported incorrectly that King lost to Cook in 2020.
The close race did not trigger an automatic recount, however, and there was no recount mandated after election officials finalized the results Nov. 13.
But King and 30 Maui County voters filed an election challenge with the state’s high court seeking to void the results of the election held Nov. 5 and to have a new contest.
A press release from Maui attorney Lance Collins says that the Maui County clerk determined 1,069 mailed-in ballots were “deficient,” meaning the signature on the returned envelope containing the ballot either had no signature, did not match the signature on file or some other condition of the envelope prevents it from being counted.
Collins argues that a ballot received by the clerk’s office “is presumed to be that of the voter and a voter may use a variation in signature. A return envelope should be deemed deficient only if there is evidence to suggest that the voter did not, in fact, return the envelope.”
The Maui County clerk violated the constitutional right of equal protection, he said, “by arbitrarily treating voters differently and not counting certain properly cast ballots” and violated due process by failing “to uniformly apply the standards” for accepting return envelopes and ballots.
“It is very important that every lawfully cast vote be counted,” King said in the press release.
Maui County Clerk Moana Lutey did not respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon.
As Civil Beat reported, the race to represent South Maui — Kihei, Maalaea and Wailea — was an important one because a King victory would likely have altered the balance of power on the nine-member council.
King and Cook have contrasting views on issues such as housing and sustainability.
Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
