Reported as the right main gear wheel fell off the aircraft on departure.įlying orbits around Beverley Airport, North of Boston. And you can still comment on stories on our Facebook page. You need to use your name and city and include a contact phone for verification purposes. Send to and put Letter in the subject line. Thoughts on this or any other story? Write a Letter to the Editor. The deadline to request a mail ballot for the Nov. Until Hawaii makes it easier to vote, we encourage the use of absentee ballots. (The City and County of Honolulu is still processing registration forms and won’t have a total count for about two weeks.) That’s worth celebrating, too. But absentee turnout exceeded precinct turnout in all four counties.Ī total of 475 people also registered and voted on election day in Kauai, Hawaii and Maui counties, the first time same-day service was offered statewide. While several states vote on other days of the week, none do so on the weekend.īy wide account, there were sometimes more poll workers than voters in many precincts Saturday. The service centers can accommodate voters with special needs, offer same-day registration and voting and provide other election services, too - something the Kauai pilot calls for.Īnd while they are at it, lawmakers should look to switch our primary from a Saturday to a Tuesday. In Colorado, it begins 15 days before an election. Chad Blair/Civil Beatįor those that want to hold on to the privilege of walking into a voting booth, we should do what Washington does: require counties to have at least one voting center open for in-person early voting beginning 18 days before an election. Absentee voting has been trending upward for years. We hope lawmakers returning to the Capitol in January will again consider the broader legislation as well as AVR. There is little excuse for doing otherwise. While we were pleased the bill did not die, it was severely weakened. When last we opined about all mail-in voting, lawmakers were considering a bill to enact voting by mail uniformly across all counties starting with the 2020 elections. The bills died, even though a person renewing their driver’s license could decline to be registered to vote. Instead, the Office of Elections is required to report back to lawmakers how the pilot program worked out.Īs for AVR, several bills at the 2018 Legislature called for Hawaii adopting the program. There is no plan to expand the program or make it permanent. After several years of killing enabling legislation, the Hawaii Legislature finally agreed this year to try a pilot program for the 2020 primary and general election - but on Kauai only. Yet Hawaii is moving very slowly toward mail-in voting. We understand that Washington, Oregon and Colorado have historically done well when it comes to voter turnout. In January 2016 it became the first state to implement AVR, which does away with the need to fill out a voter registration card at the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Oregon’s success has a lot to do with automatic voter registration. Colorado, which began mailing ballots in 2014, has seen an uptick too. In the three states that have all-mail voting, the turnout is impressive: 80.3 percent in Oregon’s 2016 general election, for example, and 78.7 percent in Washington state. Ballots were counted in the Senate Chambers on Saturday, where tables were wrapped in paper to protect the koa desks. And while evidence is mixed on whether mail-in voting improves turnout, it does offer “potential cost savings, opportunities and barriers to fraud, and access for disabled voters,” as the U.S. The trend, which began four years ago, is clear. What’s worth celebrating is the fact that the majority of the votes this primary election - more than 179,000 out of more than 286,000 cast - came from absentee ballots, a combination of mail-in and early walk-in voting. Put another way, over 3,300 fewer people voted in 2018 than in 2014. Sure, it’s shameful that turnout this past Saturday was a dismal 38.6 percent, although that’s an improvement from two years ago.Ī more useful comparison, however, is to the 2014 primary when, as with this year, there was a race for governor. The results of Hawaii’s primary are in, and the big winner is … absentee voting!
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