Senate Bill 2378 SD2 democratizes Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) elections.
We need to democratize OHA elections, because the current elections process allows a candidate to win even if that candidate only gets 30% of the votes. We explain this below.
Let's say we have four candidates (A, B, C & D) running for the same OHA trustee position and only 4,000 people vote for that position.
- Candidate A gets 1,200 votes (30%),
- Candidate B gets 1,100 votes (27.5%),
- Candidate C gets 850 votes (21.25%), and
- Candidate D gets 850 votes (21.25%).
Candidate A has only 30% of the votes (less than half), but wins the election because Candidate A has more votes than anyone else. Clearly more people (70%) voted against Candidate A, but the current election process can reward the candidate who only gets 30% of the votes. This happens because there is only one "special" election rather than a primary and a general election.
SB 2378 provides for a primary and general election for OHA Trustee. The new process would take the two candidates with the most votes (candidates A and B in the above scenario) and have them run against each other in a general election. The OHA general election would occur at the same time as the general elections for county, state, and federal offices. General elections take place in November of an election year.
Assuming that 4,000 people vote again for that particular OHA position in the general election, then, the candidate with at least 2,040 votes (51% or more) will win the election. In other words, the candidate who gets elected into office is the candidate that the majority of voters chose.
Senate Bill 2378 SD2 makes OHA elections better. But it's up to you to tell lawmakers that you want better elections for OHA.
You can make OHA elections better in just 2-3 minutes. Just call Representative Marcus Oshiro at 586-6200 and kindly ask him to schedule SB 2378 SD2 for a Finance Committee hearing. If you don't know exactly what to say, just CLICK HERE.
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