In three days, Hawaii residents will head to the polls for one of the most highly-anticipated primary elections since statehood. Thousands of voters received absentee ballots in the mail Wednesday while hundreds more took advantage of early walk-in voting.
"Even though you're registered and then you come back to me."
Honolulu Hale was bustling with activity Wednesday.
"Thank you you have a great day sir."
"Saturday we're just busy and it's really hard to get here so we're just happy that we could come today but the line is really long," said early walk-in voter Cassie Almarez.
Election officials say it is the busiest day to date.
"We've been open since September 3rd and this is the longest line I've seen so far which is a good thing," said Oahu Elections Administrator, Glen Takahashi. "Normally we've been doing about a thousand voters per day, I think we're definitely going to pass that today."
Oahu voters are especially anxious. On Monday 96-hundred absentee ballots were mailed to Oahu voters and some have yet to arrive.
"My friend I just talked to him this morning, he's coming over to my house tonight and I asked him if he got his ballot yet and he said no," said early walk-in voter Danny Auyoung. "I hope, I hope they come today."
"We just got the ballot, I didn't want to take a chance on mailing it because it's so close so I decided to run by and just drop it off," said absentee mail-in ballot voter Barbara Paris.
"With my husband he just got his yesterday so we know it has to be in the office by Saturday so he's probably going to walk his in either at one of these places or at the polling place on Saturday," said early walk-in voter Kathleen Nakasone.
Election officials remind voters 97 polling precincts have been eliminated.
"They actually closed some of the voting sites, so mine that I normally vote at is closed so we're going to have to go to another one so I'm imagining that it's going to be kind of packed on Saturday," said early walk-in voter Lisa Caires.
Early walk-in voting ends Thursday at 4 P.M. Absentee ballots must be received by the city clerk's office by the closing of the polls on Saturday at 6 P.M.
"We were telling each other oh do we really need to vote and we were walking here and we're like yeah, yeah we better vote, we better vote because even just one vote counts," said Caires.
"Everybody needs to come out and vote because yeah no vote no grumble," added Nakasone.
"Because it's important to vote, everybody vote!" said Paris.
According to the office of elections, more than 60,100 absentee voters have returned their ballots statewide. An estimated 43,000 from Oahu, 6,100 from Maui County, 5,600 from Hawaii County and 5,400 from Kauai County.
