Hawaii

Hawaii didn’t have to make any major changes in order to adapt in 2020, as its existing system proved resilient enough to maintain its ability to allow voters to vote safely, both in person and by mail, in spite of the pandemic. Since so many people choose to vote their mail ballots, the state was able to provide adequate PPE and maintain social distance at vote centers for the portion of voters that decided to vote in person. As always, we stress that policy is important, but it is just as important that it is implemented well.

As of 2021....

No Excuse Required

No excuse to vote by mail

Online Mail Ballot Application

Apply for mail ballot online

Robust Ballot Return Option

U.S. mail, drop boxes, vote centers, and more

Prepaid Postage

Postage-paid return envelopes provided

Election Day Postmark Acceptance

Accepts ballots postmarked by Election Day

Ballot Tracking

Online method to check ballot status

Signature Verification

Voter signature verified before ballot is counted

Cure Process

Ability to correct issues so ballot can be counted

Preprocessing

Election official may process ballot before Election Day

Opportunities

Ballot Tracking & Voter Notification

Hawaii can increase voter confidence by allowing voters to track their ballot much like an Amazon package by improving its current ballot tracking system. Advanced ballot tracking systems can proactively notify voters when their ballot takes a new step in the path from being sent to them to finally being counted (or rejected). If a ballot is rejected, these ballot tracking tools can be used as another method to contact voters if there is a signature mismatch or deficiency on their return envelope.

Election Day Postmark

Accepting ballots with postmarks indicating they were sent on election day is a best practice to ensure that voters are given all options to vote their ballot in a timely manner. Accepting Election Day postmarks is estimated in most jurisdictions to decrease ballot rejection rates by half. We recommend that not only does a state allow the physical postmark on a ballot, but also to integrate into the USPS system for electronic postmarks to serve as validation that a ballot was mailed on time.

Recent Legislation

As of May 20, 2021

Conveniently, Hawaii had already been planning to transition to proactively mailing all voters a ballot in 2020 thanks to a 2019 law (HB1248) so the state already had the infrastructure needed in order to conduct the election safely and securely in the “new normal”.

That didn’t stop the state from making further improvements in 2021. In 2021, the state passed SB159 to implement automatic voter registration along with SB 548, which utilizes the USPS change of address to continue to maintain the integrity of their voter registration database as well as mandating that voting machines have auditable paper trails and criminalizes establishing fake drop boxes.