Those who make the election laws and those who enforce them are the hands that rock or overturn the cradle of democracy.

Hawai'i's Elections Commission and Office of Elections are the most important institutions we have in this state to keep our elections playing field even in our democracy. These men and women are our referees, ensuring that elections are fairly contested, while also acting on behalf of the public to protect the authenticity of the democratic process. Their credibility is essential. Even the appearance of corruption or incompetence can cause the public to lose confidence in the electoral process.

Unfortunately, in Hawai'i it looks like our elections process as well as our elections office may be on a path that undermines the credibility of our state elections. Some of the reasons for this became pretty apparent in the 2008 legislative session and during the July 22 filing deadline for candidates.

In the 2008 session, for example, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 156, over the objection of the minority party as well as a veto from Gov. Linda Lingle, a permanent absentee ballot initiative. This means that "once an absentee voter — always an absentee voter." Safeguards are almost nonexistent if a voter dies or moves and someone in the same household could simply continue to vote this ballot for years without the Elections Office ever knowing the difference. "No matter," the Legislature said, "we're just trying to make democracy easier."

I'm sure that was also the motive of the chief elections officer and the Hawai'i Elections Commission that has embarrassed our state when they overlooked a number of gross examples of negligence.

For example, the chief elections officer was not legally qualified to be hired by the Elections Commission because he was not a registered Hawai'i voter as required by statute. He and his office workers also apparently were urged by the chairman of the Democratic Party to extend the filing deadline at 4:30 p.m., July 22 for a candidate to the State House of Representatives.

Moreover, the Elections Office began printing ballots while the eligibility of certain candidates was still being challenged. And if this were not enough, party officials were not consulted, in accordance with state law, to view the ballots before they were printed, nor will Hawai'i voters receive their Primary ballots in September without having to publicly declare their party preference. The elections office has contributed to confusion rather than confidence.

Though these are pretty serious charges for our state election officials, they are not really new to me. While working on the Elections Team in the Office of Democracy at USAID (United States Agency for International Development), our job was to help countries transition from being partially free or dictatorial, to becoming more democratic by holding free and fair elections.

We always started with the basics, but elections commissions often got in the way. Too often they were fronts for political parties, were understaffed and under funded, and followed no coherent set of rules. Dysfunctional election commissions made free and fair elections a joke if not a real challenge for countries that were serious about democracy. Weak commissions and election officials often led to disputes and fights where people are injured or killed for demanding too much fairness. Robert Mugabe's recent Zimbabwe elections are an excellent case in point. On the other hand, Indonesia had such a credible election commission in place that the ruling Party Golkar could actually accept its defeat at the polls in a recent election.

But in Hawai'i we appear to be dangerously drifting away from the rigors of democracy in our electoral process. Now, instead of following and enforcing the rules we have witnessed even our election clerks scramble to sign candidate petitions! Degrading the due process of voters decays democracy, and we already have the lowest voter turnout in the nation.

Gov. Lingle put it more bluntly: "The U.N. sends people all around the world to make sure things like that don't happen — that some political party hack can't go in and tell an election official how to run an election. And that's exactly what happened here."

For a variety of reasons, Hawai'i's voters are not excited about the democratic process and do not believe that the changes our state needs can be found at the ballot box. Now as the credibility of the state's elections commission comes into doubt, we can expect voter turnout to be further depressed. This threatens the true representative nature of the democracy of our state.

So what's the solution? Some are saying the chief elections officer and the commissioners should be sacked. However, this is the kind of behavior that Election Commissions and Offices of Elections rules are supposed to prevent. Instead of standing behind the status quo, the Office of Elections and commissioners must work to earn back the public's trust and guarantee that its work is fair and objective as an arbiter of political contests. Where rules are not clear it needs to consult with legislative leaders for change.

Bottom line: It must demonstrate that it is able to enforce our election laws and create an even playing field regardless of who is in control in the governor's office or the state legislature. The great news is that in the past 30 years, there's been a 50 percent increase in the number of democracies in the world. The bad news is that each year a number of countries backslide into increased government tyranny.

Hawai'i is neither a Third World country nor a banana republic, but the behavior of our elections officials and permanent absentee balloting are increasingly making us look like one. Our election officials must lead in November 2008, or get out of the way.

Rep. Gene Ward (R-Hawai'i Kai-Kalama Valley) served as a democracy specialist in the Office of Democracy's Elections Team in USAID, Washington, DC from 2000 to 2005. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.