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2024 Hawaii & National Election Coverage

Former Vice President Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential primary in Hawaii in the party’s first mail-in presidential primary in the islands, the Democratic Party of Hawaii announced Saturday.

Biden received 63.2% of the ranked-choice votes, or 21,214 votes, while Sen. Bernie Sanders received 36.8%, or 12,337 ranked-choice votes.

In total, 79,150 ballots were mailed to registered party members, and 35,044, or about 44.28%, were returned by mail.

“We did have a slightly increased turnout over the 2016 in-person caucus,” said Kate Stanley, interim party chairwoman. In 2016, 33,713 Democrats participated in the party’s in-person presidential preference poll in Hawaii.

Stanley said organizers expected to have more votes, but the turnout may have been reduced by COVID-19 as well as the Super Tuesday results, which tipped the race decisively toward Biden.

“People weren’t as engaged in trying to get delegates for other candidates because they dropped out,” she said.

Stanley said the party decided last year to hold a mail-in ballot to increase participation and also because it fulfilled a Democratic National Committee request that the state move away from a caucus election and toward a primary.

“We’re lucky we did that because now it turned out that we avoided other problems that other states have that still have to carry out in-person voting in the face of COVID,” she said.

Party members were supposed to have the option of voting in-person on April 4, but that was canceled because of the virus and the mail-in voting period was extended. The deadline for ballots to be received by mail was Friday.

Biden will receive five delegates from Congressional District 1 and five delegates from District 2, for a total of 10 delegates. Sanders will receive two delegates from District 1 and three from District 2 for a total of five.

In addition to the 15 delegates, the Democratic Party of Hawaii is sending six at-large and three party leader and elected official delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August in Milwaukee. Per an agreement between the Biden and Sanders campaigns, Sanders will receive his share of those delegates.

Hawaii’s allocation will be 16 delegates for Biden and eight delegates for Sanders.

Sanders, of Vermont, dropped out of the presidential race in April, but stayed on the ballot in states with upcoming primaries to try to influence the party’s platform.

The Democratic presidential primary is separate from Hawaii’s state-run primary and general elections, which will be vote-by-mail for the first time this year. No traditional polling places will be open during the primary and general elections on Aug. 8 and Nov. 3, respectively.