Neighborhood Board voting taking place through May 19

Voting began Friday for Oahu’s 33 neighborhood boards in what the Honolulu Neighborhood Commission Office hopes will be a largely paperless process.

The island’s approximately 260,000 registered voters were mailed unique passcodes recently that allow them to cast their ballots online at www2.honolulu.gov/nbe using either computers or mobile devices.

The deadline to vote is 11:59 p.m. May 19.

The city will make computers available to the public during the voting period from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at three locations: Kapolei Hale, Conference Room C, 1000 Uluohia St.; Kapalama Hale, Suite 160, 925 Dillingham Blvd.; and the KEY project in Kahaluu, 47-200 Waihee Road.

Voters also can also gain free access to computers at any public library on Oahu.

While Neighborhood Commission officials are encouraging the public to vote online in order to keep costs down, voters will also be able to request a mail-in paper ballot by calling the Ballot Request Hotline at 768-3763 by 4:30 p.m. May 15.

In order to request a mail-­­in ballot, voters must submit their full names, residential addresses and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Return ballots must be postmarked by May 19 and received by the commission office by May 26.

There will be no automated, phone-in voting this year.

Election results will be announced after the votes are certified by the commission office by June 1. Newly elected board members will assume office July 1.

Candidate profiles and photos are posted online at www2.honolulu.gov/nbe/candidateprofiles.php.

There are 437 seats up for grabs in all and 541 candidates running for them, city officials said. There are 33 seats without any candidates, while only 52 of the seats are being contested. Seats left vacant will be filled by people selected by the individual boards after July 1.

In the 2015 neighborhood board elections, 611 civic-minded people offered themselves up as candidates, so this year’s list represents an 11 percent drop. There were 27 seats left unfilled after the 2015 election.

The Neighborhood Commission website lists five neighborhood boards with no contested seats, so voters in those areas won’t receive either passcodes or ballots. They are McCully-Moiliili (No. 8), Kalihi Valley (No. 16), Wahiawa-Whitmore Village (No. 26), Kahaluu (No. 29) and Nanakuli-Maili (No. 36).

Neighborhood board members serve two-year terms and are not paid. Some boards split up their seats by subdistricts, other boards are composed entirely of “at-large” members and yet others are made up of a mix of both at-large and district representatives.

Mayor Frank Fasi spearheaded the neighborhood board system in 1973 to increase community participation in the decision-­making process of city government. The first boards began holding monthly meetings in 1975.

Last year members of the Honolulu Charter Commission discussed the idea of ending neighborhood boards. But that idea was nixed after a flurry of supporters voiced opposition to the boards’ demise.