The Legislature is Working Overtime to Make Our Elections Even Less Secure and More Corrupt Than They Already Are

Submit Testimony to Oppose These Bills By Monday Morning 9:45 for JDC Bills and 2:00 for JHA Bills

As if ranking last place nationally on Election Integrity wasn’t enough, the 2024 legislature is working hard to bring the abysmal level of Hawai’i’s election security and transparency even lower.

They are adding circles 10-19 to Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell.

It is up to us to fight this onslaught, and every testimony helps.

Here are the bills that need public testimony, listed in the order they appear for Committee hearing:

Senate Judiciary Hearing (JDC) 1/30/2024 9:45 AM

SB2240 Requires the Office of Elections to file an application with Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc. (ERIC)

House Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs (JHA) 1/30/2024 2:00 PM

HB1605 Requires that each vote cast for a question on a ballot for the ratification of a constitutional amendment be counted in the negative only if the ballot properly indicates that the vote is in the negative

HB1606 Requires that any new contract entered into by the Office of Elections for equipment or services relating to preparing ballots or counting votes include the capability to randomize the names of candidates

HB1609 Requires the Office of Elections to file an application with Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc. (ERIC)

HB1678 Designates all University of Hawaii system campuses as voter registration agencies as defined in the National Voter Registration Act.  Requires the Chief Election Officer to use data concerning voter registration and election participation to study voter registration, absentee voting, and provisional voting trends by age, race, and class to improve youth voter registration and election participation.  Allows student identification cards issued by the University of Hawaii system to be used to register to vote.  Designates all University of Hawaii campuses as voter service centers

HB1766 Prohibits the distribution of electioneering communications before an election that a person knows or should have known are deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes of a candidate or party

HB1786 Provides protections for clerks, election officials, and election workers from harassment, threats, abuse, and assault in the performance of their official duties.  Prohibits the sharing of personal information of clerks, election officials, and election workers for the purposes of harassment, threats, abuse, and assault

HB2560 Establishes a rebuttable presumption that a person established a new residence in a place if that person has been absent for a prolonged period of time during which the person has only been in one place

HB2612 Abolishes the boards of registration

There are more bills up for hearing Thursday that need testimony submitted by Wednesday, that will be the next article.

If you only have time for the bare minimum testimony, login to your Capitol.Hawaii.gov account, search for the bill (you should be adding these bills to your account to track as well), click on “Submit Testimony”, click “OPPOSE”, and write in the text section “I oppose” followed by the bill number.

If you have a few extra minutes you can include some bullet points for select bills:

SB2240 & HB1609 : Hawaii to join ERIC

These bills are the most worrisome of the whole lot.

ERIC issues can fill an entire article, or a series of articles. ERIC is a Soros created and funded nightmare that corrupts voter rolls. In the interest of time here are some testimony talking points:

ERIC is essentially a left wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll cleanup. ERIC is supposed to help states keep clean voter rolls, but studies have shown that it makes them worse. Nine states have recently terminated their contract with ERIC due to several issues, including privacy concerns with ERIC sharing ALL state databases, even those not related to voter registration, partisan board membership, and solicitation of nonregistered people who have already had the opportunity to register but have declined.

Why is Hawaii eager to hand over our personal data to an organization from which other states are leaving?

HB1605: This law is very confusing. Ballot questions need to be more clearly written instead of passing confusing laws to make up for poorly written ballot questions.

HB1678: Our Hawai’i youth are already preregistered to vote when they get their drivers license or at high school preregistration voter drives.

Independent data analysis of voter registration addresses at universities show massive problems with registrations that should be removed or inactivated.

Using student ID for voter registration is bad practice. it does not prevent non-US citizens from registering to vote. In the 2023 fall semester 1,189 international students enrolled at UH. It is against the law for these students to vote, and their registration into the system should not be encouraged and facilitated through a State law. There is no citizenship verification process in Hawai’i for voter registration.

Only US government issued photo ID should be allowed for voter registration.

HB1766: This bill is a slippery slope on free speech infringement. Who will enforce the law? While the use of AI deepfakes is concerning, this bill, if it becomes law, can easily abused to target only certain campaigns or individuals, while giving a free pass to others who may be committing the same violation.

HB1786: What constitutes harassment? Who will be responsible for defining “harassment”? This has the likelihood of being subjective and can be used to target constituents of the opposing political party.

HB2560: There are federal laws that require states to maintain clean voter rolls, and states can choose to do the bare minimum that is required, or adopt their own practices. Hawai’i does the bare minimum. Instead of writing confusing laws about residency that won’t be enforced, Hawai’i elections officials should do more than the bare minimum to maintain accurate voter rolls.

HB2612: The Boards of Registration are the only outlet available to citizens to challenge voter registrations. What is the replacement law being proposed if this one is abolished?

There are other election related bills slated for these hearings, but these are the most critical for submitting testimony. Check them all out using the links to the hearings provided above.

Add all of these bills to your watch list on your Capitol account. Since they are Democrat bills they will most likely breeze through the legislature and we will need to do this all over again for their next committee hearings.

Thursday is another onslaught for bad election bills, that will be the next article. This is a very busy week for Hawai’i election corruption.

Please see it as your kuleana as a concerned citizen to help fight these anti-election integrity bills.