Despite hitches that have bedeviled the process this election cycle, voters have sent a clear signal that they like the convenience of voting early or by absentee ballot. Policy leaders need to do a careful review of the primary-election operation, with any adjustments aimed at making alternative voting options as reliable as possible.

For their part, the officials who run the election office could have done a better job of heading off certain problems, including having about 300 fewer polling-station volunteers than are needed for Saturday’s election.

That shortfall came to light only this week; there are volunteers who might have been willing to step up had the word reached them earlier. Rex Quidilla, spokesman for the state Office of Elections, said at least $100,000 has been spent on advertising for volunteers and general voter outreach on key requirements.

But there’s no public-education effort that can’t be improved, and there may be ways to better this one by leveraging funds through more public-service announcements and social media campaigns. Perhaps partnering with nonprofits, civic organizations and senior citizen groups would help get the word out earlier about staffing needs.

Also, they could assist in answering frequently asked questions. For example: If voters are marked on the election rolls as having requested an absentee ballot but never received it, they can still turn up at the polling place on Election Day or at one of the early-voting stations and vote. The elections officials will discard any absentee ballots that subsequently arrive in the mail, to avoid over-voting.

In its defense, the elections crew has been up against a difficult challenge this year. Because of reapportionment, and all the legal challenges that delayed the final maps, the county clerk’s offices had far less time than usual to check and recheck how voters were reshuffled into different districts, said Bernice Mau, Honolulu’s city clerk.

That problem probably couldn’t have been prevented, but as it’s symptomatic of a redistricting process that happens only once a decade, it should not be a focal point of an elections post-mortem.

Neither should the dysfunction experienced in the Kona elections office signal a need to reorganize the polling operations statewide under a single agency, as former Gov. Linda Lingle has proposed. The problems there are, as Lingle observed, serious: last-minute changes in procedures for drop-offs of absentee ballots, staffing turnovers, office closures.

But as Mau rightly observed, those problems seem to have arisen from the inexperience of staff and are being corrected with the counsel of the state Attorney General’s Office. It’s doubtful that installing the operation under a single bureaucracy would help if, as Mau asserts, communication among state and county agencies is going well.

On the whole, absentee balloting has been embraced as a popular option, and the institution in 2010 of a permanent absentee ballot request list has cut down on many of the errors, Mau said: The people on that list all got their ballots right away, allowing more time for corrections.

But a lot of last-minute confusion about absentee ballots could be averted with more reasonably advanced deadlines for requesting them. This year’s Aug. 4 deadline to request ballots left very little time for requests to be processed and returned by mail. Next time — when there should be no late-breaking lawsuits over redistricting pushing back the calendar — it would be prudent to push that date back a bit.

Each election, in addition to making candidate choices, an increasing number of citizens show their support for more convenient voting options. With the difficulty of staffing polling stations, further improvements to these options would be a critical support to a vibrant democracy.