Will The Maui Fires Help Or Hurt Candidates In This Year’s Election?

Maui County elections workers have a few months to track down thousands of people displaced by last summer’s catastrophic wildfires before ballots start going out in late July.

The county Elections Division partnered with the state Office of Elections in October to send out roughly 14,000 letters to voters who lived in West Maui’s House District 14 prior to the Lahaina fire asking them to update their mailing address. Fewer than 1,100 responses have been received, according to County Clerk Moana Lutey.

Displaced Lahaina voters can choose to have their ballots tied to their residential address before the fire, regardless of where they’re physically located now.

“We’re treating it as though they still are living in Lahaina — even if they’ve left the island or left the state,” Lutey said.

Voters who’ve relocated within the state also have the option to vote in their new district instead.

Aug. 8 will mark a year since the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century devoured most of Maui’s historic Lahaina town. Two days later, voters will be marking their ballots for numerous candidates including incumbents, challengers and newcomers in the primary election.

It’s a first chance for voters to express their feelings on how their leaders have dealt with the fire that killed at least 101 people, displaced 13,000 survivors and caused an estimated $6 billion in property damage.

But with a huge portion of the Lahaina electorate living in emergency or short-term housing, and others having fled the state, there are concerns over mail-ballot access and voter turnout.

Although an official estimate of the number of people who’ve left Maui won’t be available until next year, demographers estimate thousands of people have moved to new towns or states amid a dire housing shortage.

Gov. Josh Green and Maui Mayor Richard Bissen — two of the most visible politicians coordinating state and county wildfire relief efforts — are not up for reelection this year. But all nine seats on the Maui County Council are up for grabs along with all five state House seats and all three state Senate seats representing Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

Candidates have until June 4 to file their paperwork to run, and some races are already taking shape.

The fires affect Lahaina and Kula constituents most directly but, due to the enormous cost of recovery, voters everywhere stand to be impacted by county and state decision-makers faced with redistributing public money to come up with the billions of dollars required to rebuild Lahaina.

Voters tend to punish incumbent candidates at the polls after a natural disaster, said John Gasper, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies how storms and other catastrophes shape electoral outcomes.

But his research also shows that voters pay attention to post-disaster displays of leadership and are inclined to reward politicians who take effective action. 

“People are looking to their elected officials for help,” said Gasper, whose county-level analysis of elections from 1970 to 2006 covered dozens of emergencies across the country. “So, weirdly, these types of disasters can be good things for politicians in the fact that they are opportunities to showcase leadership.”

Ige’s Disaster Response Bump In 2018

For former Gov. David Ige, the eruption and summit collapse of the Big Island’s Kilauea volcano and floods triggered by record-breaking rainfall on Kauai in 2018 offered the chance to overcome criticism of his botched handling of a false warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack that sent thousands of Hawaii residents into a panic.

In the five months leading to the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, Ige turned a 20 percentage point deficit in polling into a 7-point win against his challenger, Colleen Hanabusa. Political analysts have said the twin natural disasters helped Ige demonstrate leadership.

There’s limited research on whether wildfires sway voter turnout. But given an expected increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters in years to come, a study by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance suggests moving elections to an earlier month of the year. In Hawaii, November falls during hurricane season and follows the two most risky months of wildfire season.

There are also considerations of race and class. After Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, election participation dropped sharpest in the poorest and blackest neighborhoods. The storm displaced a greater share of these populations, making them less likely to have their ballot tied to their storm-damaged neighborhood.

One factor that may help Maui County elections workers is the year-long interval between the August 2023 wildfires and the August 2024 primary election.

“It gives us time to reach out to voters as many ways as we can — calling, emailing, voter registration events — to give them the opportunity to get their ballot,” Deputy County Clerk Richelle Thomson said. 

With so many fire survivors facing financial setbacks, housing insecurity, job loss and emotional duress, elections workers say they’re adopting new outreach efforts to make it easier for a scattered electorate to make its voice heard.

‘How Do We Reach People That Might Be Living In Vegas?’

The biggest challenge facing Maui County elections staff is collecting updated mailing addresses for displaced Lahaina voters. The state’s mail-in ballots, unlike other forms of mail, cannot be forwarded through the U.S. Postal Service — and they’re expected to start going out in late July.

One way voters can update their mailing address is online at MauiCountyVotes.com or through the state Office of Elections. Voters who’ve changed their address on their driver’s license or state ID card will automatically have their address updated for voter registration purposes.

The county’s letter-writing campaign to Lahaina burn zone residents late last year was largely ineffective. It’s had better success reaching voters by phone. Although some voters have disconnected or changed their phone number in the fire’s chaotic aftermath, Lutey said the county has reached the majority of the 7,000 Lahaina voters for whom it has a phone number on file.

“I understand a number of people have moved out of state,” Lutey said. “And so one of the things that I think we really need to look at is how do we reach people that might be living in Vegas or LA or Oregon or whatever it is.”

To this end, the county Elections Division is working with Hawaiian civic clubs on the mainland to spread the word to displaced Lahaina residents about post-fire voter registration protocol. Voters who may need to relocate several times before the Aug. 10 primary or Nov. 5 general election must update their address every time they move.

Voters who’ve relocated outside of West Maui since the fire should opt to have their ballots counted for House District 14 only if they intend to return to the greater Lahaina area when it’s safe and feasible to do so, Lutey said.

“At this point we really don’t know how long any of this rebuild will take,” Lutey said. “Clearly it’s not going to be done this year.”

For Lahaina-area voters on Maui, there are concerns over transportation access. Roughly 4,000 cars were burned in the August wildfires and another 1,000 vehicles were damaged or abandoned during the rush to escape as Lahaina went up in flames, according to Maui County officials. Therefore, some voters who prefer to cast an in-person ballot may have difficulty getting to voter service centers or ballot drop boxes.

The county will operate a voter service center at the Lahaina Civic Center Aug. 8-10 for the primary election and Nov. 2, 4 and 5 for the general election. There also will be ballot drop boxes on the island’s west side at the Lahaina Civic Center and the Napili Fire Station.

The county plans to put more ballot drop boxes in West Maui, but those locations have not yet been determined.

The state faced similar hurdles to ensure voter access after the 2018 volcanic eruption of Kilauea cut some Big Island voters off from polling locations. Elections workers mailed absentee ballots to roughly 6,000 Pahoa voters that year following a decision to shutter two polling stations, including one that was in use as an emergency shelter for people displaced by lava.

But that was before Hawaii switched to an all-mail voting system starting with the 2020 primary election.

“Voters were mailed their ballot if they were cut off from their polling location because of the lava, but it was a different election model at that time,” said Nedielyn Bueno, state voter services section head. “We’ve never faced something to this extent.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.