Lack of ballots to count leaves Hawaii election volunteers at home

Some volunteer ballot counters and election observers have been told to stay home this week because of a lack of ballots to count ahead of Saturday’s primary election.

As of Wednesday over 234,000 ballots had been received via mail, dropped off at collection sites or cast in person at voter service centers. That’s 32% of the 730,000 ballots that were sent out to registered voters in Hawaii two weeks ago.

“Since we moved to elections by mail, we have to schedule volunteers and want to be sure we have enough volunteers to cover the ballots that come in (each day),” said Nedielyn Bueno, spokesperson for the state Office of Elections. “We also have to be sure we cannot work without official observers, so they also have to be scheduled. We do have to make adjustments depending on how many ballots we receive, but we do apologize if there’s no more ballots to process.”

The Office of Elections already canceled second shifts of volunteer ballot counters Saturday and again Wednesday at the state Capitol.

Election officials for months have declined to estimate how many votes they expect to be cast in Hawaii’s second election cycle featuring widespread mail-in balloting, coinciding with vastly reduced numbers of in-person voting locations.

They also previously said this year’s primary election attracted more than enough volunteers and observers at balloting sites in every county across the state.

The volunteers’ per diem payments vary by county but range from $80 to $95 in base pay, with an additional $35 per shift, Bueno said.

Hawaii traditionally lags the rest of the country in voter participation but set new records in the 2020 election year, which included the election of President Joe Biden over the incumbent, Donald Trump.

But 2022 is a midterm election year with no marquee presidential race, so compared with 2020, turnout is expected to be lower for Saturday’s primaries and again in the Nov. 8 general election.

How much lower won’t be known until Saturday night.

In Hawaii’s 2018 primary election — before all mail-in balloting — 286,180 votes were cast, representing 38.6% of eligible voters.

The number surged to a modern record of 407,190 votes, or 51.2% of eligible voters, in the 2020 primary. Mail-in was clearly the preferred method of voting in 2020, with 401,716 mail-in ballots cast.

By comparison, only 5,474 votes were cast in person in 2020, representing just 0.7% of ballots.

For Saturday’s primary, Colin Moore, director of the University of Hawaii’s Public Policy Center, expects that 350,000 votes will be counted in total when the polls close Saturday night.

It’s difficult to compare a presidential election year to a midterm, but Moore said voter turnout “is always lower when it’s not a presidential year.”

As of Thursday the number of votes cast across Oahu was running 20,000 below the 2020 presidential year, Moore said.

“But there are always a bunch that come in the last few days and the last day,” Moore said. “We’ll easily beat what we did in the primary election of 2018. No matter what, we’ll do better than what we did in 2018.”

Low voter turnouts tend to benefit incumbents with higher name recognition, he said.

A higher voter turnouts tends to attract new voters “and benefits challengers as a rule,” according to Moore. “New voters are less predictable, more open to new candidates or they’re excited about someone who’s saying different things than in the past.”

Even after Saturday’s votes are counted, political analyst Neal Milner said it could take at least two more election cycles to determine any modern-day voting patterns.

“It’s like any other trend,” he said. “You want to look at more data points. I would guess it’s going to be another two more elections until we have a better idea of what’s going on. A lot of these elections have been sort of one-offs with a relatively new system. We’ve had such an up-and-down jump that we need more history.”

Mail-in ballots can be dropped off at a handful of voter service centers and official “place of deposit” drop boxes across the state until 7 p.m. Saturday. Voters also will be allowed to register and vote in person at the service centers until polls close.

The 2020 elections saw long lines at in-person centers on the final day of voting. By law, anyone in line before 7 p.m. on Election Day must be allowed to vote, which will delay the release of election results until all votes are in.

Have you voted yet?

>> Mail-in ballots can be dropped off at a handful of voter service centers and official “place of deposit” drop boxes across the state until 7 p.m. Saturday.

>> For more information and a list of voting sites, visit elections.hawaii.gov.