A Glitch In Hawaii’s New Ballot-Tracking System Catches Big Island Voters By Surprise 5 County officials fixed the problem within an hour but many voters were left wondering if they could trust the tracking system.
More than 2,000 voters on the Big Island were surprised to find a message from the county elections office Thursday informing them that their general election ballot had been received and was being counted.
Problem was, none of them had received a ballot in the mail let alone voted and sent it back.
Hawaii County elections officials said Thursday the mistake involved a new ballot tracking system — called BallotTrax — that is being used statewide this year. Voters who sign up for the service can manually look up their ballot’s status online, or they can opt to receive notifications of their ballot’s updates through texts, email, or phone.
BallotTrax’s messages are automated, going out based on data that each county elections office uploads. In this case, the Big Island’s elections office accidentally uploaded data from August’s primary election, which is why voters were falsely notified that their ballots had been received.
