Voting on Kauai begins Friday

Walk-in absentee voting for the primary election begins this Friday, Sept. 3, at the historic County Building on Rice Street in Lihu‘e.

And unlike in the City & County of Honolulu, there are enough Kauaians to man the polling places, elections officials said yesterday.

Traditionally, Kauaians cast thousands of walk-in and mail-in absentee ballots during even-numbered years, said Peter Nakamura, county clerk. And the results of the absentee balloting usually mimic trends of winners and losers when all the votes are counted.

In polling places from Kekaha to Hanalei, there are only a few precincts short of workers 19 days before the primary election on Saturday, Sept. 18, Nakamura said. “Not as bad as city (Honolulu),” Nakamura said.

Additionally, there are excesses of workers at certain precincts, so county elections officials are trying to convince them to work at polling places not necessarily in the town they vote in, he continued.

County elections officials always try to recruit more poll workers than will be needed for an election, and will recruit up to election day if necessary, Nakamura said. To date, there is no scheduled class to train additional poll workers.

As standard operating procedure, ballots for those registered to vote on Ni‘ihau will be delivered to the island and back to Kaua‘i via helicopter. No seats are available for poll workers on those flights, as there are Ni‘ihau residents to work the polls there who were recently trained on Kaua‘i, Nakamura said. There are fewer than 200 registered voters on Ni‘ihau, he said, and poll workers try to keep the Ni‘ihau School polling place open until all on the roll have voted.

As of yesterday, there were 31,709 registered voters on Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau, a figure that may go up or down slightly before the primary. There were 34,652 registered to vote in the 2002 general election.

Paul C. Curtis, associate editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@pulitzer.net.