GOP TO PULL POLITICAL REFORM BILLS

The House Republicans are planning to pull two political reform measures out of committee tomorrow. "These simple, straight-forward measures are long overdue," said Rep. Galen Fox, House Republican Leader, "and their passage would help restore the people's confidence in our political process."

One of the two bills calls for posting results at the precinct as soon as they are available, ending the requirement that precinct chairs be members of the Governor's party, and sets the margin of 1% of total votes cast as an automatic recount trigger. The other bill would end the corrupt practice of contractors giving money to the officials who award contracts. It would do so by prohibiting persons who receive state contracts from making political contributions to those who award contracts beginning with the year before the contract is awarded, and extending until a year after the contract ends."

"Posting the unofficial results outside the polling place immediately after it closes is a simple task," said Representative Emily Auwae (R-Waianae). "The final totals are readily available from the optical scanning counters and should be made public."

"The issue of who should be a precinct chair should certainly be non-partisan. Yet the law states that all precinct chairs must be from the same political party as the governor. Since every governor since 1962 has been a Democrat it means that every precinct chair for 40 years has been a Democrat. Why have any political party requirement at all? This must be changed."

"As for the recount provision, virtually every jurisdiction in the United States has some statute requiring an automatic recount" said Auwae. "The optical scanning equipment we now use does make mistakes. We have seen that in the past--in my race. We need to be able to hand count ballots when the results are extremely close and questionable."

The ban on contributions from state contractors would end a corrupt practice already outlawed at the federal level and in a majority of states. "As Campaign Spending Commission head Bob Watada pointed out in calling for this reform, contractors hate buying bucketloads of fundraiser tickets just to do business with the state or city," Fox said. "They would love just to compete for state and city contracts on merit alone, not based on who gave the most to the Governor or Mayor."

- 30 -