As Tina Grandinetti canvassed door to door in her Kaimukī-Kahala-Kapahulu district last summer, she could see through screen doors mail-in ballots on coffee tables lined up next to campaign materials of all the candidates in her District 20 race.

For Grandinetti, who was in her first race for the Hawaiʻi House of Representatives, it was clear that mail-in voting promoted meaningful civic engagement.

“It works because it’s simple,” she said. “It makes it easier for local working people to submit their ballots, and in doing so, it makes democracy more accessible — more accessible to people who work two or three jobs and odd hours, more accessible to college students who are away from home but want to stay engaged in local politics, and it’s more accessible to kūpuna who might struggle to get around without assistance.”

Grandinetti spoke at a press conference Thursday morning at the State Capitol Rotunda where she and her colleague, Rep. Adrian Tam, along with good government groups vouched for Hawaiʻi’s statewide voting system that has been in place since 2020.

“We are here today to reassure the public that mail-in voting and early access to voting is here to stay and is not going anywhere, despite the requests coming from the Elections Commission asking us to return to single-day and in-person voting,” said Tam, who like Grandinetti is part of the Democratic Party majority at the Legislature.

The press conference was in response to a request to lawmakers from the Hawaiʻi Elections Commission in late August to return the state to same-day, in-person voting. The proposal was prompted by investigations of alleged discrepancies in the results of the general elections held in Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi counties in November.

Thus far, House and Senate leaders have not formally responded to the commission’s proposal to abandon the current voting system, nor to another commission request to audit the 2024 elections. Data and research show that voting by mail is popular, safe and secure.

Tam implied that he did not believe a majority of his colleagues would go along with the commission’s recommendation. He rejected any notion that Hawaiʻi’s elections are subject to mass fraud and error, something that Tam characterized as “unfounded conspiracies” and efforts to suppress the right to vote.

Ending the ability to vote early and by mail is particularly worrisome to Tam, who said that 45% of his Waikīkī district is comprised of seniors who could be disenfranchised should options for casting ballots be curtailed.

“Hawaiʻi’s mailing voting system is safe and trusted and working well, and there’s no reason to turn back right now,” he said.

Instead of trying to limit access to voting, the Elections Commission should instead do what it can to make it easier to vote, say advocates. They include adding more drop boxes in West Oʻahu, setting up more voter service centers in rural parts of the state, streamlining voter registration, conducting voter outreach and education campaigns and allowing more public participation in the voting process.

On that last suggestion, Aria Juliet Castillo of the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action said the state and counties could arrange for trained, nonpartisan community members “to witness the entire chain of custody — from ballot collecting, handling, storage and counting, because transparency builds trust.”

Castillo also called for full use of the state’s ballot tracking software “so that every voter can confirm exactly where their ballot is mailed out, received, verified and counted. This adds confidence and accountability to the process.”

Other suggestions from representatives of HAPA, Common Cause Hawaiʻi and ACLU Hawaiʻi include extending the deadline from five to 10 days for the state to “cure” or verify voter signatures on ballot envelopes.

“The fact that people can vote easily from their kitchens, from their living rooms, from their offices, and know that their vote has been received, that it has been counted, is a fantastic change in what we’ve had in the past,” said Josh Frost, the policy advocate for ACLU Hawaiʻi. “So for the Elections Commission to say that we should go back, that we should limit voting to in-person day of voting, simply is nonsense.”

The press conference concluded with Tam describing voting as “very personal to me. My parents immigrated here from China and Taiwan. And, you know, Taiwan does have a democracy, but China doesn’t. It’s a single-party rule.”

He continued: “I’ve been voting ever since I turned 18. It’s something that I cherish very close to my heart. It is something that we have fought for for such a long time. And that’s why I’m standing here today, doing this press conference, because I want us to protect our access to voting and our right to vote.”