Absentee voter
turnout is steady on
the first day

Most people understand
how to use the new ballots,
an election clerk says

By Craig Gima
Star-Bulletin

Katherine Au, 81, was feeling good so she decided to vote.

"Yesterday, I felt junk. I felt all right today so I thought I'd better come," she said after she cast her ballot on the first day of walk-up absentee voting.

Au said she doesn't know how she'll feel on election day so she comes down to Honolulu Hale when she's able. Even though there was a slight rain, Au used her umbrella as a cane as she slowly made her way across Punchbowl and King Streets to catch the No. 4 bus home.

"I want to have my say as a citizen," she said, adding she has not missed an election for as long as she has been old enough to vote.

Turnout on the first day of absentee voting was pretty steady, said City Clerk Genny Wong.

About 369 people cast ballots yesterday, about the same or a little higher than the election two years ago, she estimated.

Brad Kirkpatrick, an elections clerk who was collecting ballots yesterday, said most people understood how to use the new ballots.

He said one man filled out his ballot wrong, but when offered a chance to correct the ballot, the man turned it in anyway.

"He said, 'I don't want to. It doesn't count anyway,'" Kirkpatrick said.

At the registration table, Kathleen Hurtubise used a demo ballot to explain the new voting system where voters mark their choices with a pen instead of a hole punch.

The ballots are color-coded to separate the various political parties.

"You choose one color and you only vote in one color and everybody can vote in this section," she said pointing to the pink section of the ballot where the nonpartisan Board of Education and City Council races are listed.

"When they look at the pink section, that's the only time they're confused," said Fe Dumalao, another election clerk.

Anita Chariw said she likes the new ballots better than the old ones.

"Sometimes those (old hole punch) machines got stuck and that was annoying," she said.

Chariw also brought her daughter, 18-year-old Corrine Farrow, to register to vote for the first time in the general election.

"It is a family thing," Chariw said.

"My mom's very politically active," Farrow noted as her mother cast her ballot.

"She was like, 'it doesn't make a difference,'" Chariw said. "But the only way to make a change is by each individual vote."

After registering, Farrow said she felt good about it.

"It's part of being an American citizen." she said.