������Ƶ

Honolulu and Maui elections officials were unprepared for long lines at in-person voting sites Tuesday despite calls from elections advocates four years ago to open more voting centers on Election Day.

Lines snaked outside of Kapolei Hale like the queue for a concert. Voters waited in the rain long into the night outside of Honolulu Hale to cast their ballots. The voter service center in Wailuku also saw long lines.

Voters were still in line in Kapolei shortly before 11 p.m., but state election officials expected to release the first results before midnight.

Elections officials opened a few more in-person voting locations compared to four years ago, but those were closed before Tuesday. There were four more centers leading up to Election Day, 12 this year instead of eight in 2020. Officials also added 20 additional drop boxes since four years ago, bringing the total to 56.

But there were no additional voter centers on Oahu on Election Day in a state where thousands of people still want to vote in person. State leaders urged election officials Tuesday night to do better in 2026 by opening more polling places and finding ways to move the lines along faster.

But similar calls for more centers after the 2020 delays appear to have gone unheeded.

 “This is foreseen,” Camron Hurt, who leads the good governance advocacy group Common Cause Hawaii, told Hawaii News Now, adding that Hawaii “must invest in our democracy infrastructure.”

Hurt told Civil Beat he waited in line to vote for an hour and a half Tuesday morning. He appreciates that access to mail-in ballots has expanded, but thinks it’s important to keep in-person voting accessible too. He took issue with Oahu only having two voter centers open on Election Day.

Hurt said that voter access in all forms is important to maintain, and that lower turnout could also be a consequence of people deciding on Election Day that it’s not worth waiting in line. He referenced his own reason for standing in line rather than voting by mail.

“I voted today in person, as a long-standing tradition of honoring my heritage of voting in-person as an African-American male,” he said, adding that his grandmother used to have to pay a poll tax if she wanted to vote in his home state of Tennessee.

The city opened four voter service centers this election season, up from two in 2020. The additional centers were located in Kaneohe and Wahiawa. However, the center in Kaneohe was open from Oct. 22 to Oct. 26, while the Wahiawa center was open from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.

“They did add voter service centers, but it appears this issue is an Election Day issue,” state elections chief Scott Nago said.

Other states require county elections offices to adjust the number of voting centers based on the population size of their counties. For example, to open one voter center for every 12,500 active voters on Election Day.

Honolulu elections officials were reluctant to open additional voter centers on Election Day because they worried their personnel would be stretched too thin to effectively staff all of the centers, Nago said. The Honolulu clerk’s office couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Honolulu’s election budget is about , up 54% from four years ago.

Maui County also opened additional centers in Lahaina and Hana. The Hana center was only open Oct. 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Maui County Clerk Moana Lutey, overseeing her first general election, said she did not expect such a big turnout of in-person voters Tuesday at the Velma McWayne Santos Community Center voting center in Wailuku.

She was helping out at the only other voting center on Maui, at the Lahaina Civic Center, which did not have any lines as polls prepared to close. More than 12,000 people were displaced from Lahaina after the deadly August 2023 fires.

Looking to the 2026 election, she said she would like to have a bigger facility with more staff and more computers that process the ballots. There were four computers in Lahaina and six in Wailuku.

Lutey was nonetheless encouraged by the amount of Maui voters participating in the election.

Stacey Broadsword said she usually casts her ballot in Pukalani but decided to vote in person Tuesday.

“This is insane,” she said.

The voter center in Kona closed about 9:40 p.m. Hawaii County Clerk John Henricks said he doesn’t think anything is amiss under the current system. He’s also not sure that opening more voter centers could help ease the long lines.

“Nothing leads me to believe that they wouldn’t just be open past 7 o’clock at those places because perhaps certain of our voters would prefer to vote on the last day of voting, in person,” Henricks said.

He also declined to offer up solutions on election night.

“That’s not the time to do it, you need to look at everything that happened, let a bit of time pass, and do your analysis,” he said.

Calls For More Centers

Some elected officials were already trying to find solutions to the long lines on Tuesday.

Sen. Brenton Awa thought about it while he stood in line waiting to cast his ballot in Kapolei. He was at the end of a line that saw some voters waiting six hours or more.

 “We had elementary schools open in precincts. I’m not asking for everything to go back to what it was, but we have to have more than two places to vote on Election Day, not just one in the west and one in the south (Honolulu Hale),” Awa said. “We have nothing in the east, nothing in the north.”

State Rep. Darius Kila, a Democrat who represents a district on Oahu’s Westside, said many of his constituents were unaware of the voting service centers that provided early voting.

“Maybe we don’t actually do a good job at messaging enough what is available to folks,” said Kila. “They’re not used to the idea of what a voter service center is. I think folks are used to hearing about precinct polling places.”

The city had been running online ads warning people they would face long lines if they waited until Tuesday to vote. The state elections office also increased its outreach efforts encouraging people to register ahead of time. Waiting to do that until Election Day could slow down the lines even more, Nago said.

“If people have to register, they shouldn’t wait until the last minute,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case was sign-waving in Kapolei on Tuesday afternoon and stopped at Kapolei Hale afterward. Case said many of the voters he spoke with were first-time voters who registered Tuesday.

“One can say that voting by mail is safe and convenient, but that doesn’t change their mind. They want to vote in person,” he said. “And I think we should try to accommodate that a little bit more rather than squeeze everybody into a vote-by-mail mentality.”

Gov. Josh Green said he was distressed by voters having to stand in line but, like Case, was encouraged by citizens doing their civic duty.

“It’s out of the right kind of spirit, which is to let everyone get their vote done,” he said.

Still, Green wondered whether it was possible to limit in-person voting on Election Day to morning hours “so that we’re pau by 1 or 2 p.m.”

Not everyone waited until the last minute to vote. The vast majority of voters in Hawaii cast their ballots by mail well ahead of Election Day.

Many of them were Republicans, who have traditionally voted in person.

At the Republicans’ watch party in Kakaako, attendees said they wanted to avoid waiting in line for so long. Distrusting mail-in ballots and the drop box system, they said, they voted in person early at the request of the former president.

Attendee Rebecca Fagasa of Kaneohe said that she always votes on Election Day. But she voted early this year — about a week ago, she said, “because Trump asked us to.”

Gina Hill of Wahiawa made the same point.

“I went and voted in person because I’m traditional,” she said, adding, “Donald Trump told us to vote now, vote early.”

Civil Beat reporters Leo Azambuja, Nathan Eagle and Kevin Dayton contributed to this report.