HONOLULU, Hawaii, USA— Joe Biden won the Democratic Party presidential primary in Hawaii today, a process that had been postponed for more than a month due to the new coronavirus pandemic.
Biden defeated Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator, taking 63% of the vote.
Biden obtained 16 delegates from Hawaii and Sanders will keep eight. Biden has a total of 1,566 delegates to the party’s national convention, according to a count by The Associated Press. It needs 1,991 delegates to obtain the Democratic candidacy, a number that is expected to reach in June.
A total of 35,044 people voted in the party primaries. All ballots were mailed.
Initially, the party had planned to hold the elections on April 4 and hoped that most of its members would vote by mail and others would do so at the nearly 20 face-to-face voting centers in the state.
The party began mailing ballots to registered party members in early March, when Sanders and Biden were ahead and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was still in contention for the nomination.
However, concerns about the spread of the coronavirus forced the party to announce on March 20 that it would cancel plans for the in-person vote and only receive ballots in the mail. In order to provide an opportunity to vote in person to those who expected to do so on April 4, the party indicated that it would send another round of ballots to members and wait until the end of May for them to be sent back and counted.
Among these changes, Gabbard abandoned the contest and supported Biden. Sanders ended his attempt and supported Biden on April 13.
The electorate was asked to mark their three favorite options on the ballots.
It might interest you:
– .
