The Hawai‘i Election Commission must be allowed to meet, the state Supreme Court has ordered.
On Friday, the Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruled in favor of a pair of state election commissioners, who had petitioned the court to intervene in an ongoing dispute with the Office of Elections that had, they argued, prevented the Election Commission from meeting since June.
The Office of Elections and state Election Officer Scott Nago told the Supreme Court in October that the only way the Commission could schedule a meeting without a chair — the previous Commission chair’s term ended in June with no successor — was if at least five commissioners reached out to the Office of Elections requesting a meeting. Then and only then would the Office of Elections, which serves an administerial role to the Commission, be empowered to begin scheduling a meeting.
But commissioners Ralph Cushnie and Tamara McKay countered that commissioners don’t have ready access to their fellows’ email addresses, making it difficult to even coordinate a five-person request for a meeting.
Moreover, Cushnie and McKay argued that a task as simple as scheduling a meeting does not require a majority of commissioners to approve.
The Supreme Court on Friday determined that “the power to call the Commission together belongs to [the Commission], chair or no chair.” Without a chair, a single commissioner is all that is needed to request the Office of Elections to set a meeting.
The argument by the Office of Elections that arranging a meeting is “board business,” and therefore requires a quorum to be discussed, is incorrect, wrote Justice Todd Eddins. “Arranging a meeting,” Eddins wrote, “is housekeeping.”
Eddins also wrote that, once the Commission does finally convene, its first item of business will be to name a new temporary chair. And although the state argued that the chief justice of the Supreme Court must fill the vacant seat after such a long vacancy, Eddins ruled that “the chair is the Commission’s to fill.”
“Those who exercise power for the people may contemplate the Aloha Spirit,” Eddins wrote in conclusion. “The Office of Elections and the Elections Commission serve one public and one end. Elections the people can trust. That trust is earned when the two work together in harmony, in the open.”
Nonetheless, despite the Supreme Court’s verdict, Cushnie told Aloha State Daily on Monday that the state election process remains anything but transparent.
“There is nothing verifiable about our elections,” Cushnie said, adding that he already has concerns about the ballot-counting processes at work for this year’s general election.
Furthermore, Cushnie said that, in light of the Supreme Court verdict, he has requested correspondence from the Office of Elections that he said had been withheld since 2024, including all emails sent to or from the official Commission email address, which the Office of Elections administers. Cushnie claimed that the Office of Elections had been filtering out complaints to the Commission that might otherwise have been discussed at future Commission meetings.
As of Monday, he said, that correspondence had not been delivered.
However, Cushnie said the Office of Elections has begun scheduling an Elections Commission meeting that may take place Nov. 12.
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