About one-third of ballots on Oahu for primary vote may have been submitted

An estimated one-third or more of those casting votes in this year’s first-ever all-mail primary election may have already voted, Honolulu City Clerk Glen Takahashi said.

City Elections Division staff had received 71,625 envelopes as of Saturday, six days after they began collecting them from Oahu voters.

“In a primary election we might see anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 persons (voting) in the final number,” Takahashi said.

The number of votes cast so far “is on par, maybe even doing a little bit better,” than in the last few elections, Takahashi said late Friday.

The official Oahu voter registration total for the 2020 primary election is 525,153, a figure that also includes inactive voters that may not have yet been purged from the rolls, Takahashi said.

If you haven’t yet mailed in your ballot, you should do so by Saturday to ensure it’s counted.

The traditional polling places will not be open on Primary Election Day, Aug. 8.

Voters who don’t want to vote by mail can walk into either Kapolei Hale or Honolulu Hale through Election Day to either drop off their ballots or register to vote on the spot.

Due to a recent law passed by the state Legislature, the all-mail election format means Takahashi’s office now sends out ballots to all registered voters on its rolls.

In recent primary elections, roughly 100,000 voters chose to vote via absentee ballots, with about 60,000 additional votes cast in the voting booth on Election Day, Takahashi said.

Because all registered voters are receiving ballots in the mail for the first time, Takahashi expects to encounter problems such as ballots being sent to addresses where a voter no longer lives. Others have raised concerns about needing to sign the face of the return envelope.

The Elections Division said Oahu voters in need of replacement ballots can make their requests through the Online Ballot Replacement Request System website available at hnlvote.ehawaii.gov. Requests are being taken through Aug. 6 for the Aug. 8 primary.

While city election crews are tasked with mailing out Oahu’s ballots to registered voters and then collecting them when they are returned, the still-sealed envelopes containing filled-out ballots are sent to the state Office of Elections, as has been the process for a number of elections.

State election workers open the envelopes and count them on Election Day.

For more on this year’s election, go to honolulu.gov/elections.