They built a new digital voting system, but the voters didn’t come.
There was some disagreement Wednesday over why only 6.3 percent of eligible voters used a new, first-in-the-nation digital voting procedure to cast ballots for Honolulu neighborhood board seats via the Internet or by touch-tone phone.
But officials at both the Neighborhood Commission, which oversees the neighborhood board elections, and the San Diego, Calif.-based company that created the voting system, insist that digital voting is probably the wave of the future.
“The technology side, it works,” said Joan Manke, executive secretary of the commission. “But it’s a whole new arena. It’s something that’s removed from your traditional paper ballots, which has been done for years and years.
“So my sense is because it’s a change, it’s something totally new, it takes time. I think, for people to buy into it, to want to actually try it,” she added.
But the head of Everyone Counts, the firm that put the system together, said the low turnout announced with the results Tuesday had little to do with the technology. Instead, many voters may just have felt little inspiration to cast ballots, said Chief Executive Officer Lori Steele.
“Our systems aren’t really about turnout. They’re more about accessibility to participation,” said Steele. “I think in local elections you’ll find that — well, probably in all elections — turnout really depends on the candidates and the political parties and the election officials and their marketing campaigns.”
In the 2007 neighborhood elections, turnout was 28 percent with voters choosing either paper or online ballots.
The commission did try to get the word out this year. Manke said she participated in numerous radio interviews, and the agency bought ads in local newspapers.
Web voting, which produces no paper record, cannot be used in city or state elections because state law bars voting systems that…