BRUCE ASATO / 2018
Over 100 Election Day officials volunteers handled absentee ballots. Pictured is the team opening the yellow secret ballot envelopes to collect the actual ballots in the hallway outside the statewide counting center at the Capitol. Another team of volunteers separated the yellow secret ballot envelopes from the blue mail-in envelopes.
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Easy. Inexpensive. Effective. Richard Borreca rightly celebrates the passage of the Vote by Mail (VBM) bill this year (“All mail-in voting in 2020 would place Hawaii among leaders of accessible balloting,” Star-Advertiser, On Politics, May 5).
He is also right to highlight comments by election official Patricia Nakamoto, who said that for VBM to actually improve voter turnout, people need to ensure that the elections office has their current address. Had the Legislature also passed the Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) bill, outdated addresses would be a non-issue.
AVR ensures that whenever an eligible voter gets or renews his or her driver’s license, applies for a state ID, or files a change of address, that information is transmitted to the elections office automatically, unless the voter opts out.
Together, VBM and AVR could lift Hawaii from the doldrums where it now languishes as the state with the lowest voter turnout. Lawmakers could still resurrect AVR, if they have the will.
Ma Glodilet Rallojay
Waianae
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