Hawaii’s vote-by-mail process adopted in 2019, prior to the advent of the coronavirus, was proven emphatically to work. It significantly increased Hawaii’s disgracefully low voter turnout rate, even in the middle of a pandemic. Voter turnout increased by more than 16% over the previous primary in a general election year, and by more than 14% over the prior general election!

This increase of over 14% in voter turnout rate over the 2016 general election is the best in the nation.

Hawaii — its citizenry and its elections officials — should be incredibly proud. The vote-by-mail process was conducted, for the most part, smoothly and efficiently. The public can have confidence in the integrity of Hawaii’s election system, given the multiple safeguards with the mail-in process — unique ballot and return envelope barcodes, signature verification, and ballot tracking. These are just a few safety features of Hawaii’s vote-by-mail process.

Even though Hawaii’s mail-in balloting process was successful, improvements should still be made.

One, there needs to be more voters service centers (VSCs) statewide. The lines statewide on Election Day showed that there are voters who require in-person services. The general election had a 3.5% in-person turnout rate at VSCs compared with the primary, which had a 0.7% in-person turnout rate. There were no waits at any VSC during the primary, but there were lines at every VSC throughout the state on Election Day during the general election.

A mere five-fold increase of in-person voters at our eight VSCs caused waits of up to four to six hours at Kapolei and Honolulu Hales on Oahu, and of approximately two hours at Maui island’s lone VSC. This is an unacceptable infringement upon voters’ fundamental constitutional right to vote.

It was foreseeable that people would need in-person services. Common Cause Hawaii has been advocating for more VSCs since 2019, when only eight statewide were announced.

Historically marginalized groups, lower-income voters, young voters, houseless voters — all with less-constant mailing addresses — and people needing language assistance and people with disabilities, usually vote in-person. This, plus the constant, false narrative from the federal administration wrongfully impugning the integrity of voting by mail and actually undermining the reliability of the U.S. Postal Service, would all obviously lead to more people voting in-person at VSCs.

Two, Hawaii should have more drop box boxes for people to deposit their voted ballots. There should be one drop box for every 15,000-20,000 registered voters. Drop boxes should be situated in areas where there may be communities with historically low vote-by-mail usage.

It was especially disappointing to see on Oahu, with 549,935 registered voters, that there were only 12 drop boxes. Oahu should have had between 27 and 37 drop boxes for its registered voter population size. Further, there was only one drop box on the westside of the island — Waianae District Park — and only one drop box on the northern tip of the island, Kahuku District Park.

Three, Hawaii should pass Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) in 2021 to facilitate voting by mail. AVR would help update the voter rolls to ensure that ballots are mailed to people’s current, correct addresses.

AVR would, additionally, ensure that the names on voters’ ballots match their identification for voter security. AVR would lessen the number of people who would need to go in-person to a VSC to register to vote and, thereby, shorten the wait times. Undoubtedly, AVR would substantially improve the vote-by-mail process.

In sum, Hawaii’s vote-by-mail worked spectacularly well, dramatically improving our notoriously low voter turnout rates. However, amendments are still necessary for the benefit of elections officials and the public.

We need more VSCs and drop boxes and AVR. Let’s make this happen in the 2021 legislative session. Let’s do better for us and democracy.

Sandy Ma is executive eirector of Common Cause Hawaii.