19 August 2026

Easy to vote. Less to vote for.

The 2024 Cost of Voting Index ranks Hawaiʻi the 4th-easiest state in America to cast a ballot. All-mail voting since 2020: a ballot mailed to every registered voter.

Hawaiʻi’s presidential turnout ranks #50.

Turnout did rise after all-mail voting began: about 7 points between 2016 and 2024, from 43% to 50%. In states without all-mail, turnout rose about 3 points over the same years; Hawaiʻi’s gain was more than double that.

The rank did not move: #50 in five of the past six presidential cycles. Oregon, all-mail since 2000, is #7; Colorado, all-mail since 2013, is #6.

Last place is not a technicality. Oregon and Hawaiʻi have voted for the same party in every presidential election since 1988; Oregon still turns out. Strike all 43,000 stationed service members from the eligible-voter count and assume all voted elsewhere: Hawaiʻi is still last in voter participation.

What changed is what’s on the ballot. 279 candidates filed statewide in 2024, a decade low, down from more than 400 in 2022. Sixteen of 51 state House seats drew no challenger. The ballot is easy to get; what’s on it is getting easy to ignore.

The August 2026 primary showed the same pattern. Early returns on Oʻahu, with no major race, lagged the last two primaries; on Kauaʻi and Maui, with contested mayor’s races, they ran at or ahead of pace. Same mail system everywhere. “Competition in elections drives turnout,” University of Hawaiʻi political scientist Colin Moore said.

Governor’s races say the same. Hawaiʻi elects its governors in midterm years, and in 1998, when the governor’s race was decided by about a point, turnout ranked #8 in the nation. In 2018 the race was a 29-point blowout, and turnout ranked #50, the only midterm since 1982 in which Hawaiʻi has ranked last.

Mail voting did its job. The remaining gap to Colorado and Oregon is not about how the ballot arrives; it’s about what’s on it.