Republican raffle: They like to say every vote counts in an election but two Hawaiʻi legislative seats literally came down to luck of the draw.

In what has got to be one of the weirdest political moments in election history, on Saturday two incumbents lost their seats when Chief Election Officer Scott Nago reached into a woven basket and drew out an orange plastic ball that had someone else’s name inside it.

So aloha to you, Kanani Souza, and to you, Kurt Fevella.

The lucky winners? Sheila Medeiros and Bob McDermott.

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The Republican primary outcomes in House District 43 and Senate District 20 had been too close to call since the Aug. 8 election. Souza, the GOP maverick and Good Government Caucus incumbent, led challenger Medeiros (who had lost to Souza in 2024) by just a single vote until elections officials factored in “cured” ballots. Those are ballots that had a signature issue or some other problem that by law voters can correct within a few days of the election.

Cured ballots put the two candidates at a tie — 842 votes each — with only 35 blank votes in the contest.

In Senate District 20, former state Rep. McDermott had been leading incumbent Fevella by a handful of votes but the addition of cured ballots resulted in each of them with 1,212 votes. In that primary, a third candidate, Rida Cabanilla, siphoned off 333 votes.

State law, which was changed to this new process in 2025, requires the winner in cases of tie votes to be selected “by lot” or a drawing.

On Saturday, that went like this: Nago announced the process while his helpful assistant made sure to show that things were on the up and up. See, the baskets are empty. See, the correct names are on the cards. And here they go into the orange plastic balls (two for each race.)

Shake the basket. Open it up. And Nago turns his head to the side when he reaches in so he can’t see which ball he picks.

And presto! A winner.

McDermott will go on to the Nov. 3 general election where he will face Democrat Markus Owens.

Medeiros, however, has won the seat outright because there is no other candidate in the general.

And they say we need term limits to get rid of incumbents.

Primary pickings: The Blog knows you were busy battening down the hatches as Hurricane Lala moved through the islands this weekend so we pored over the final election results for you. They were released at about 6:30 p.m. Friday.

Turnout turned out to be 33.2%, about the same as the last primary election in 2024. That amounted to 281,214 people who voted out of 846,543 who had registered but didn’t cast a ballot.

Citizens, we need to get better. Please.

Virtually all of the ballots — 32.5% — came in through the mail.

The legislative races were, once again, a love fest for incumbents even though so many many many of you complain about incumbents. The still-unfolding bribery scandal did not move you to throw the bums out.

Nine senators, all incumbents, won their seats outright in the primary. That leaves only five Senate seats for general election ballots plus the Senate District 18 seat long held by Michelle Kidani until she retired in July. That seat will be decided in a special election on the same day as the general, on Nov. 3.

Over in the House, 21 candidates — 19 of them incumbents — won their seats outright. That includes Sheila Medeiros who (see above) just won the lottery for House District 43. That leaves 30 House districts up for election in the general.

The Blog is always interested in the lesser known (we like to call them third party) candidates and if they ever get any traction at all. At first glance it would appear, sadly, no. The Libertarian candidate in Senate District 3, Austin Martin, has the dubious distinction of getting the fewest votes in the entire election — just 16.

But hey, he’s still moving on to the general, having prevailed as the sole candidate in the Libertarian primary. He will face House Finance Chair Chris Todd, the textbook definition of a powerful Democrat. On Nov. 3. Todd got 2,444 votes in his primary.

The only other Libertarian in the election, perennial candidate Frederick Fogel, did slightly better with 41 votes. He too will move forward to the general where he faces off against longtime Sen. Joy San Buenaventura, another Democrat, who collected more than 5,000 votes. That’s in Senate District 2.

The Green Party also fielded two candidates this year. One, Paele Kiakona who’s been very involved with Lahaina Strong since the August 2023 Maui fires, came away with 181 votes in his House District 14 race. That’s the seat where longtime Rep. Elle Cochran switched from Democrat to Republican this year (she was the sole Republican in her primary and won it with 726 votes). Three Democrats also ran for the seat with Maui business and community leader Sne Patel prevailing with 995 votes. This is a good race to keep an eye on because we also will see an underlying battle between two big unions, the Hawaiʻi Government Employees Association that is backing Kiakona (its first ever Green candidate) and the Carpenters Union endorsing Patel.

On Oʻahu, Green Party candidate Jesse Fitzgerald with 23 votes under his belt will face off against incumbent Mike Lee, a Democrat of course, on Nov. 3. Lee got about 4,800 votes in District 50.

It appears only one nonpartisan candidate did well enough in the primary to move on to the general. But then Hawaiʻi sets the bar for independent candidates ridiculously high — they have to get at least 10% of the total votes cast in the race or at least as many votes as one of the other party candidates.

In the Congressional District 1 race, Nathan Berning seems to have accomplished the nearly impossible task by getting 977 votes, which was more than double the 402 votes cast for the Green Party candidate, Jordan Conley.

And in the special election for Senate District 18, a nonpartisan candidate will be on the ballot, chosen by lottery in accordance with state law.

Good thing Scott Nago has some experience with that now.

Peruse all the final results here.

Election selection: Ralph Cushnie, a commissioner with the currently in limbo Hawaiʻi Elections Commission (it lacks a chair and can’t meet), is suing the county clerks of Maui and Kauaʻi. The lawsuit claims that Moana Lutey (Maui) and Jade K. Fountain-Tanigawa (Kauaʻi) have violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

The lawsuit, filed this week by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, alleges that the counties “failed to inform federal surveyors of the undeliverable mail ballot totals” for the primary and general contests in 2024. They also did not state the number of “inactive” registrants they canceled from the voter roll for the 2023-2024 election cycle, according to a press release from PILF.

Those inactive cancellations are mandated as part of the 1993 law, Cushnie and PILF contend. Lutey and Fountain-Tanigawa told The Blog they had no comment on the pending litigation.

The PILF is a conservative legal group out of Virginia that boasts on its website it exists to assist states and others to “aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections.” Just last month it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court its lawsuit to get access to Hawaiʻi’s statewide voter rolls, something that the Hawaiʻi Office of Elections says it won’t give them.

Of note: The Brennan Center for Justice says that election integrity is really about the Trump administration to perpetuate the Big Lie that the president actually won the 2020 election and to go after anybody who feels otherwise, especially local election officials.

Of note: Bill Harrison of the Harrison Law Center in Honolulu serves as PILF’s local counsel.

Unfriendly fire: U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaiʻi, is one of 14 Senate Democrats trying to force Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to honor the First Amendment at the Pentagon. The Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act, introduced last week, would restore media access at the Department of Defense, reversing attempts by Hegseth to “suppress independent reporting” at the Pentagon.

“At a time of war, transparency and independent, accurate reporting matter more than ever,” Schatz said in a press release. “Our bill will reverse the Pentagon’s effort to shut out the free press and make sure the public gets the information it deserves.”

The act, which is unlikely to go anywhere in a Senate controlled by Republicans under Donald Trump’s thumb, would restore reporters’ ability to venture into areas of the Pentagon that were accessible prior to 2025 restrictions put into place by Hegseth last year.