STAND

STAND. COM. REP. NO.3041

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2002

RE: H.B. No. 2843

S.D. 1

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs and Judiciary, to which was referred H.B. No. 2843 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO ELECTIONS,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purposes of this measure as referred to your Committees were to provide for automatic recount of votes in elections with a margin of victory below a specified percentage, and to move the primary election date to the second Saturday in August.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Office of Elections, the League of Women Voters of Hawaii, and Common Cause Hawaii.

Your Committees agree that close election contests should be subject to automatic vote recount, in order to ensure that the proper candidate has indeed won. Therefore, your Committees support the intent of the provisions of this measure that provide for recount of votes in close contests.

Your Committees have amended this measure by replacing its contents with the contents of S.B. No. 3086, S.D. 2, a related Senate measure. The primary purposes of S.B. No. 3086, S.D. 2 are:

(1) To require special elections to be conducted solely by mail;

(2) To provide for an automatic recount in close election contests;

(3) To change to an as-yet unspecified amount, the maximum allowable campaign contributions that can be made by persons and entities;

(4) To require the names of candidates on each official party primary ballot to be printed on separate ballots;

(5) To require persons holding public office to forfeit the office held upon conviction rather than date of sentencing; and

(6) To appropriate funds for the Office of Elections to effectuate the purposes of this measure.

Your Committees further amended this measure to delete the provisions regarding maximum allowable campaign contributions. That issue is addressed comprehensively in separate legislation before the Legislature this session, and your Committees believe that the issues of campaign contributions and election procedure should be addressed in separate measures.

Your Committees also amended the recount provisions to delete the requirement that the recounts be conducted manually. The Office of Elections testified that manual recounts are extremely time consuming, and since your Committees have decided not to advance the date of the primary election, this amendment is prudent.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs and Judiciary that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 2843, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 2843, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs and Judiciary,

____________________________ DONNA MERCADO KIM, Chair		____________________________ CAL KAWAMOTO, Chair
		____________________________ BRIAN KANNO, Chair