Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer who is under fire for a number of missteps since he was hired from Wisconsin last year, had better pray that spoiled ballots because of overvoting in next month’s primary election are down from 2006.

Cronin is taking heat from both the Democratic and Republican parties for ignoring state law and failing to show them the primary ballots before they were printed.

Now that they’ve seen the ballots, both parties are concerned about a new requirement that voters check off the political party they choose before voting instead of just filling out the ballot for the party whose primary they wish to vote in.

The parties are worried that having to designate a party preference will confuse voters who consider themselves independents. They fret that these voters will check the independent box and then have their ballots disqualified if they vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries instead of for the two independent candidates on the ballot.

Cronin said voters who do that can have their mistake corrected at the polling place, but admits the third of voters who cast their ballots absentee could be out of luck.

He says multiparty voting was already a major problem under the old system, with nearly 2 percent of the ballots disqualified for that reason in 2006. He insists the new process is less confusing and will significantly reduce spoiled ballots.

The proof will be in the numbers. There were 5,231 invalidated ballots in 2006, and if the number does go down significantly, perhaps Cronin can start turning around the mounting criticism he’s facing.

But if the number of spoiled ballots jumps, he could be on his way back to Wisconsin.

I look more closely at the blunders that have bedeviled state and county election overseers in my column in the Opinion section of today’s Advertiser, “Election officials earn poor marks.”

It’ll be interesting to see if Hawai’i Sen. Daniel Inouye draws any flak from fellow Democrats for going to Alaska to campaign with embattled Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, Inouye’s best friend in the Senate whose re-election is in trouble after he was indicted for corruption.

You’d think a Democratic senator helping a Republican would rankle party leaders at a time when Democrats hope to win enough GOP Senate seats to achieve a veto-proof majority — with Alaska a prime target of opportunity.

In Hawai’i, lesser Democrats have been brought up on charges for consorting with the opposition.

This isn’t the first time Inouye has put friendship ahead of party. Local Democratic activists objected in 2006 when he continued to support Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman after he lost the Democratic primary and ran as an independent.

The Hawai’i Democratic hierarchy did a tap dance to duck punitive action against their titular leader, and Inouye finally let them off the hook by finding an excuse to drop his support for Lieberman.

But it’s hard to see that happening with Stevens as long as he remains unconvicted and stays in the race.

Not only does their personal friendship run deep after serving together for 40 years, but they’ve forged a unique political alliance as senior members of the appropriations and commerce committees that has enabled both to bring home big pork no matter which party is in power.

Good enough reason for Democrats to look the other way?

The state Elections Commission is backing its embattled chief elections officer Kevin Cronin, with the panel’s chairman William Martson saying, “The commission feels that somebody has put a target on his back and has unfairly gone after him.”

Oh, really? Let’s look at some of the arrows that have pierced Cronin since he arrived here from Wisconsin last year with little experience running elections:

• He’s embroiled the Office of Elections in a still-unresolved dispute over the purchase of new voting machines that has left us precariously close to not having a reliable and transparent system in place for this year’s elections.

• Bewildering decision-making by his office and poor communication with the city clerk resulted in two candidates being disqualified after they had been certified as eligible at the filing deadline.

• He ignored state law and ordered potentially confusing primary election ballots printed without letting the political parties exercise their legal right to review them.

• He failed to personally register to vote in Hawai’i until prodded to do so seven months after he was hired, a clear violation of the conditions of his employment under state law.

It seems that if there’s a target on Cronin, the dripping paintbrush that put it there was wielded by his own hand.

***

Kirk Caldwell is one of the big losers of this election after giving up his House seat and powerful position as majority leader to run for the City Council, only to be disqualified because of problems with the paperwork in his last-minute switch.

There’s little question that the city clerk made the right call under the law in ruling Caldwell ineligible, but it’s hard to feel good about it.

Caldwell was a decent majority leader, a straight-shooter with a sense of humor who was often the closet thing to a voice of reason in the endless squabbling between the House, Senate and Lingle administration.

His disqualification means that Duke Bainum will be unopposed in claiming the council seat being vacated by mayoral candidate Ann Kobayashi, which isn’t easy to take given that Bainum has spent most of his time on the Mainland licking his wounds since losing the 2004 mayor’s race to Mufi Hannemann.

I thought the aborted council showdown between Bainum and Caldwell was mostly about getting a leg up on succeeding Hannemann as mayor when he moves on.

That battle could still materialize if Hannemann, who recruited Caldwell to run for the council, offers him a role in the city administration from which to remain visible.

This week starts and ends with rail transit as we place tongue in cheek and “flASHback” on the news that amused and confused:

• After pledging to fight a voter initiative on transit by any legal means, Mayor Mufi Hannemann now says he’ll support putting the question on the ballot if it’s worded right. His preferred wording: Should we tie Charles Djou or Ann Kobayashi to the tracks for the train’s inaugural run?

• An Advertiser poll found that two-thirds of O’ahu voters polled support rail, but most say they won’t use the train themselves. Kind of like good manners — nice for other people to have.

• Hawai’i is spending up to three times the national average on our roads, but their condition is the 47th worst in the nation, a study says. Anybody heard if Chinatown bookies think we’ll do any better with rail?

• Duke Bainum, who’s lived mostly in Arkansas lately, rushed back to Honolulu and rented an apartment so he could run for the council when Kobayashi declared for mayor. Don’t they have city councils in Arkansas whose dysfunction he could contribute to?

• Gov. Linda Lingle test-drove fuel-efficient vehicles at a federal energy lab in Colorado. She must have been relieved to get home to the comfort of her new gas-guzzling Infiniti SUV.

• The state’s chief elections officer Kevin Cronin says he meant to register to vote as the law requires of him, but it kept slipping down his to-do list. Makes you curious what other parts of the election law he considers optional.

• Tesoro Corp., owner of Hawai’i’s largest gasoline refiner, said high oil prices and less demand cut its profits to a fraction of last year’s. All together now: Awwwwwwwww.

• Michelle Wie’s best LPGA showing this year is a DQ, but she’s still one of the five highest-paid female athletes at $12 million, according to Forbes. No wonder she didn’t sign her scorecard. She must have writer’s cramp from endorsing the checks she pulled from Nike’s clenched teeth.

• John McCain mocked Barack Obama by likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. I guess a man McCain’s age is more into the Gabor sisters.

And the quote of the week …

… from Councilman Romy Cachola on the need to give voters a say on rail:

“I’m willing to hold hands, because if we don’t, the public will crucify this institution.”

I promise not to crucify him if he keeps his hands to himself.

A month ago, the question of whether or not to call Hawai’i’s first Constitutional Convention in 30 years seemed the hottest local issue likely to be on the November ballot, with Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann and other incumbent office-holders seemingly cruising to re-election with little opposition.

Now, the mayor’s races in Honolulu, Kaua’i and the Big Island are all hotly competitive, there are interesting council races around the state and it seems increasingly likely that a rail transit question will be on the O’ahu ballot.

ConCon has slipped into the background and the discussion has gone nearly silent, raising the question of whether its prospects are improved or diminished in an election that is suddenly generating excitement elsewhere.

A hot-button rail initiative, especially, would draw away attention and resources that otherwise would have gone into advocacy for or against a ConCon.

My guess is that while the new developments may mean a quieter ConCon debate, they may well increase the chances that enough voter support will materialize to call a Constitutional Convention.

According to the Advertiser’s Hawai’i Poll, partisans on both sides of the rail dispute agree by a good majority that voters should get a say on the matter, a strong showing of support for direct participatory democracy that could transfer to the ConCon question.

The embarrassing fumbling by elections officials on qualifying candidates at the filing deadline seems to be increasing the sense that something is wrong with our political system that needs to be fixed.

Whether or not a ConCon is the sexiest issue on the ballot, it remains one of the most important things we’ll decide this year.

Groups like HawaiiConCon.org will have to find ways to keep a vibrant discussion going — not only on whether to call a ConCon, but how it should be set up to assure a true citizens’ convention and not a gathering of the status quo.