It's the second to last day for walk-in absentee voting, and spots islandwide are seeing a continuing jump in participants.
Honolulu is seeing nearly 2,000 walk-ins a day at its sites islandwide. The Big Island a thousand a day. Maui and Kauai several hundred daily each.
"Usually the last two days are the busiest days so I hope people will come out and vote early if they so choose," said Glen Takahashi, Oahu elections administrator.
It's a choice more and more people are making, with an ever growing share of ballots being cast ahead of election day.
"I think in the primary election we had 45% of the voters voting or by mail so we'll see if we get to the 50% mark," said Takahashi.
That would mark the first time more people voted early instead of the traditional first Tuesday in November.
Already about 33,000 people have done so through early walk-in as of Friday afternoon. The Nakashimas are among them.
"It's just more convenient with no waiting in lines," said early voter Marla Nakashima. "I read the paper and I listen to the debates."
"It's more convenient, it's easier than trying to squeeze it into your work day, and we just happen to be off today anyway," said early voter Mark Nakashima.
More than 690,000 people are registered to vote in this general election, down slightly from 2008.
But what continues to rise are the requests to vote ahead of time by mail. More than 135,000 ballots were sent out from the various counties.
So far, more than 96,000 have already come back with many days left for that.
Walk-in voting ends Saturday at 4 p.m., mail-in ballots have to be received by 6 p.m. Tuesday. The Office of Elections is declining to declare a "safe" last day to mail it. Election day voting is Tuesday November 2nd and runs from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Log on to http://hawaii.gov/elections for more information.
