Action Alert: Call for Testimony on Automatic Voter Registration & Why We Won’t be Discussing Term Limits This Year
The Committee On Judiciary and Hawaiian Affiars is hearing an important bill on expanding Automatic Voter Registration.
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 2025
TIME: 2:00 PM
PLACE: VIA VIDEOCONFERENCE Conference Room 325
Support HB322 - Automatic Voter Registration Improvements
What Does This Bill Do?
It makes registering to vote easier and more efficient for everyone. Your information is shared securely between state agencies and election officials to ensure that voter registration is accurate and up-to-date. The system will not process your registration if you’re not a U.S. citizen.
Why Is This Important?
By integrating voter registration into everyday interactions with state agencies, more people are likely to register to vote since it simplifies registering. The bill balances ease of registration with personal choice by allowing individuals to opt out easily if they prefer not to participate.
In addition to submitting written testimony by February 12th at 2 pm (late testimony accepted), please consider testifying orally, either in person or via Zoom.
Sample Testimony:
Aloha, Chair Tarnas, Vice Chair Poepoe, and Members of the Committee,
My name is [NAME], and I am writing in STRONG support of HB322, which expands Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) by integrating voter registration with state agencies, permits, programs, or services with "dual-purpose applications," allowing individuals to register to vote, update their voter information, or decline to register through a checkbox.
[PROVIDE PERSONAL VOTING EXPERIENCE HERE]
This reform simplifies the registration process, ensuring that more eligible residents can easily register to vote while maintaining the integrity of our voter rolls through secure and accurate information sharing. The bill also respects personal choice by allowing individuals to opt-out and safeguards to prevent the registration of non-citizens.
Mahalo for your consideration!
Your Name, Town
Why We Won't be Discussing Term Limits This Year
There are 6 bills addressing legislative term limits that were waiting for a hearing, 5 in the House and 1 in the Senate. All of them got double referrals to their respective judiciary and finance committees. The deadline for their first committee to have heard, passed and filed a report is Thursday February 13th, which means they would have had to be scheduled for their first hearing by now.
All of the bills would be constitutional amendments, meaning that if passed, instead of being made into a law, they would be a question on the ballots of every Hawaiʻi voter in 2026.
Since there is another session before the 2026 election, some lawmakers may argue we don’t need to hear it now, similar to how the House has punted their marijuana legalization to next year.
Judiciary Committee Chair Tarnas has publicly stated that he doesn’t support term limits and as chair of the committee, he has sole jurisdiction on what bills are heard in that committee. He has chosen not to hear any of the term limit bills that were referred to JHA. 4 of members of the JHA committee introduced legislation this year for term limits, 3 more support them, and 2 who oppose them, and 1 undecided (Civil Beat).
Mahina Poepoe (vice chair) (introduced)
Della Au Belatti (introduced)
Elle Cochran (supports)
Mark J. Hashem (opposed)
Kirstin Kahaloa (undecided)
Amy A. Perruso (introduced)
Gregg Takayama (opposed)
Chris Todd (supports)
Diamond Garcia (supports)
Garner M. Shimizu (introduced)
Tarnas believes an election is a term limit. He unseated an incumbent the 2nd time he ran against her (Cindy Evans, District 7) He hasn’t had a competitive primary since.
The majority of the committee has authority to request the chair schedule and hear any of the bills that are referred to the committee, but it’s rare and the process doesn’t happen during public hearings.
House rules state if a chair of a committee refuses a request from the majority, there is a process to petition the “review panel” which makes a recommendation to the speaker, who ultimately will rule in favor or against the recommendation. Newly elected Speaker Nakamura is not on record on whether she supports term limits, but her review panel, who would be made of the Majority Leader (Quinlan) the Vice Speaker, (Ichiyama) and Majority Floor Leader (Morikawa), are all likely going to support their committee chair regardless of their personal feelings on the issues (according to Civil Beat, Quinlan supports, Morikawa opposes, and Ichiyama is not on record.)
Similarly, in the Senate, Chair of the judiciary committee Senator Karl Rhoads does not support term limits, and neither does his vice chair, Senator Gabbard, though he believes the public should be allowed to vote on it. Chang, Awa and San Buenaventura are supportive.
Here is a summery of all of the term limit bills that we won’t be talking about this year.
HB298: Proposes a twelve-year term limit for all legislators, "grandfathering” current legislators. It was introduced as part of the Republican Minority Package (Ward, Alcos, Garcia, Matsumoto, Muraoka, Pierick, Reyes Oda, Shimizu)
HB570: Proposes an amendment to establish a twelve-year term limit for legislators similar to HB298, emphasizing public support and a need for reform based on recent studies. (Shimizu)
HB488: Proposes ten-year limit for house and twelve years for senate. It also lists additional provisions prohibiting anyone with convictions from running and calls for suspending lawmakers charged with crimes. (Muraoka, Pierick)
HB495: Proposes a sixteen-year term limit for both chambers. (Iwamoto, Matsumoto, Perruso, Pierick, and Ward)
HB764: Proposes term limits but leaves out the specifics to be determined in a future bill. This has the most bi-partisan and broad support (Belatti, Amato, Garrett, Grandinetti, Hussey, Matsumoto, Perruso, Pierick, Poepoe, Reyes Oda, Souza, Ward)
SB1594 is a companion to HB495, calling for a sixteen-year term limit for both chambers (Awa, DeCorte and Ihara)
