President Donald Trump has renewed his campaign against mail-in ballots, saying he is considering an executive order to do away not just with voting by mail but with voting machines as well — ahead of next year's midterm elections.
Hawaiʻi lawmakers changed election laws to embrace mail-in voting. That was six years ago.
The Conversation talked to State Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago about what it would take to go back to in-person voting. Nago told HPR it would not be easy. Just securing the leases for precincts is something done years in advance.
Interview highlights
On his reaction to the proposed executive order
SCOTT NAGO: It was puzzling because, as an election official, our job is to maximize access to voting. And to limit it to one day, and also, machines are objective, not subjective, so to count it, I'm assuming, by hand, is going to be a subjective process, which we haven't hand-counted ballots since I want to say the '70s or maybe the '60s. So if you thought your results were going to come out late now, they'll probably be even later, because we would have to verify all those hand counts. ... It's going to be a massive undertaking if we have to switch from our current model to a completely new model that would entail the recruiting, the training, all that, which the reserve, like I said, the reserving of the facilities, all that, and also the voter education, telling voters. It's a big difference from just receiving your ballot in the mail to having to go to a polling place on Election Day to vote.
On Hawaiʻi's vote-by-mail history
NAGO: Hawaiʻi has actually had a very long history with voters voting by mail. In 2019, the Legislature enacted vote-by-mail, but it actually goes back further than that, to 1993, when they implemented no-excuse absentee voting. So prior to that, you needed a reason to vote by absentee mail. In 1993, they implemented no-excuse. So anybody who wanted to vote either by mail or in person at an early vote site could do that without having an excuse. So Hawaiʻi's always had that strong vote-by-mail or absentee voting presence.
NAGO: If you look back at the numbers, I'm going all the way back to the 2014 election, more people actually voted prior to Election Day than they did on Election Day. And then, when you look at the vote-by-mail numbers — or something that is probably overlooked, the first vote-by-mail elections was not in 2020, it was actually in 2010. That was a special election for the U.S. Rep. District 1, which had a turnout of 171,000 voters. If you want to compare that to a previous special election, which wasn't conducted by mail, there was only 76,000, so almost double of that voted because there was a vote-by-mail election.

On in-person voting and voter service centers
NAGO: Previously, voters were under that time crunch to make their decisions in the voting booth. Now they can receive their ballot, they can take the time to study it, they can look up, do their research, and then they can vote without the pressure of having to do it in the voting booth with a long line behind you. ... The voter service centers are open 10 days in advance, they're open on Saturdays. There's numerous voter service centers throughout the island. We ask that if you do vote in person, don't wait until the last minute, because that's when we tend to see the big, long lines, especially at the end of the day, the last hours of voting on Election Day, that's when you see the longest lines.
HPR also reached out to the Hawaiʻi attorney general’s office, which issued a statement saying there is currently a stay in court over a move by the Trump administration to require citizenship checks prior to voting, which also included language to force states to exclude absentee or mail-in ballots.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 19, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.