Voting rights | election law

Subscribe to Voting rights | election law via RSS

Update 8/13/2014: complaint filed in circuit court on the Big Island, not the Supreme Court. More on the Complaint and motion for a TRO here. 

++++++++++++++++++++++

It appears that the Chief Election Officer’s decision to postpone the primary election in the storm-hit Puna district on the Big Island and hold it on the Admission Day holiday on Friday, August 15 — instead of waiting for the full 21-day period which state law permits (which we covered here) — won’t go by without legal action if the reports are to be believed. See “Hanabusa May Sue to Block Friday’s Primary Election in Puna,” and “Hanabusa threatens to sue to block Friday’s election.” 

We obviously haven’t seen any lawsuit, but we have a few questions:

  • What court would have jurisdiction to consider the challenge, and does the Supreme Court have original jurisdiction as

…
Continue Reading Issues To Watch In The Promised Lawsuit Challenging Hurricane Primary

220px-Swing_vote_08
A Puna Voter?

Of all of the impacts of Hurricane Tropical Storm Iselle — which whacked the Big Island but thankfully not the rest of the state last Friday — the one that may be the longest lasting may be that the Democratic Party primary election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Dan Inouye (filled in the interim by Brian Schatz, appointed by the Governor) will come down to one little district on the Big Island.

As long-time readers may know, from time-to-time we also cover election law topics, so on this beautiful post-storm and sunny Sunday, so we’re going to diverge a bit from our usual subject, because along with our colleague Mark M. Murakami, we were curious about the law governing the situation where a natural disaster interferes with an election. 

First, the tale of the tape. According to the latest…

Continue Reading The Law Behind Hawaii’s Hurricane Senate Primary Election: Let The Games Begin!

Here’s what we’re reading today:

  • Eminent Domain, Ultra Vires, and Adverse Possession Walk Into a Bar… – from SCOV Law, a blog about the decisions of the Vermont Supreme Court: “Get ready to dust off your nineteenth-century-property-law hats, folks, cause this case is chock-full of neglected old cases about rail beds, public trails, adverse possession, eminent domain, and railroad corporations venturing outside the realm of their existential purpose.”
  • Writ to Watch: Ruggles v. Yagong – from Rebecca Copeland at Record on Appeal, about a case which the Hawaii Supreme Court recently agreed to review. The issue is whether an ordinance adopted by the voters of the County of Hawaii (the Big Island) is preempted by state law. The initiative ordinance made it the official policy of the County to make enforcement of personal use of marijuana the lowest priority for the police and prosecutors. Oh my. The trial court

…
Continue Reading Wednesday’s Reading List: Vermont Eminent Domain, The Big Island’s Weed Ordinance, And Quo Warranto

The Hawaii Constitution requires that a member of the state House of Representatives be a “qualified voter” of the district she or he represents. In Hussey v. Say, No. CAAP-13-0002255 (Apr. 24, 2014), the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals analyzed how someone who asserts that the representative from District A is in actuality a qualified voter in District B goes about mounting a legal challenge. Is this really a challenge to the representative’s voter registration, and thus must be instituted in the county’s Board of Registration, or may the challenger institute a quo warranto lawsuit in state circuit court? The ICA settled on the latter answer, concluding that courts have jurisdiction to consider these type of claims. 

The case involved allegations that a long-time House member who represents one district and is registered to vote there was actually living in another district (where his spouse and family live and …

Continue Reading Quo Warranto Fu: Courts Have Jurisdiction To Determine Whether State Representative Is A Qualified Voter In His District

Yesterday, according to the coconut wireless, was the official last day on the Hawaii Supreme Court for Associate Justice Simeon Acoba. State court justices and judges face mandatory retirement at age 70, and Justice Acoba’s birthday is coming up in March.

While time marched on, so did the process for selecting his successor on the court. Governor Abercrombie has nominated a circuit court (trial) judge, and the Senate Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on the confirmation for next week. Le roi est mort, vive le roi.

While his body of work is large, we didn’t want to let this moment pass without singling out three opinions authored by Justice Acoba: the first a 3-2 majority opinion in favor of property owners, the other a 2-justice dissent in a case involving a municipality’s power to sue itself, and a final stand-alone dissent. The first two, as you may already…

Continue Reading Aloha, Justice Acoba

Not only did the State win the reapportionment legal case in which it successfully argued that military personnel and their families who reside in Hawaii are not “permanent residents” and thus may be treated as outlanders and ignored for state reapportionment purposes [we represented the plaintiffs who challenged that scheme], but with the proposed defense cuts, it seems that Hawaii officials are now all worried that we might not have all those federal defense dollars flowing so readily from off-island that the large military presence in the islands brings (roughly $18 billion per year). 

It was always ironic to us that on one hand, the State of Hawaii and seemingly every Hawaii pol aggressivly lobbied for a large military presence in Hawaii in order to enjoy the money and the extra seat in Congress that Hawaii’s military population brings us, but when it came time to count these folks…

Continue Reading Looks Like Hawaii Won’t Need To Count All Those Soldiers, Sailors, And Marines In The Next Reapportionment Anyway

Our Latin cousins warned us long ago homo sapiens non urinat in ventum (“a wise man does not pee into the wind”) but such wisdom doesn’t prevent us from trying at times to buck the conventional thinking. Because sometimes, you don’t know which way the wind is blowing until you go outside and actually feel the breeze. 

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court told us. In a one-line order, the Court affirmed the three-judge U.S. District Court’s ruling that the 2012 Hawaii Reapportionment Plan, which excluded active duty military, military families, and students who do not pay resident tuition from the population basis, did not fall short of Equal Protection’s requirements. See also SCOTUSblog’s “Hawaii Redistricting Upheld.” The 2012 Plan treats these classes as residents who have not exhibited the intent to remain in Hawaii “permanently.” The Court also affirmed the 2012 Plan’s very large (44% and 21%)…

Continue Reading Supreme Court Upholds Hawaii Redistricting Plan

For those who just can’t get enough of law school, here’s your chance to return. Each January, the University of Hawaii Law School holds its “J-Term” during which brings in legal scholars from across the nation (bet it’s not too hard to convince a few lawprofs to spend mid-January in Honolulu) to teach on selected topics. And some of the lectures are open to the public.

Here are the details of this year’s Saturday, January 11, 2014 public J-Term classes. If you are an “interested member of the community” (i.e., the public), you can attend.  Among the topics are a couple that reach out and grab us:

  • The Law of Elections, Democracy & Politics (Professor Richard Pildes, NYU Law), 3:00 – 5:00 p.m., Classroom 3.
  • Construing the Hawaii Constitution: Criminal Procedure Protections (Justice Simeon Acoba, Supreme Court of Hawaii), 5:10 – 7:10 p.m.

We’re going, for sure. The…

Continue Reading Go Back To Law School: U. Hawaii’s “J-Term” Classes Open To The Public

Here’s the Brief Opposing Motion to Affirm, filed today (Dec. 26, 2013) in Kostick v. Nago, No. 13-456.

That’s the appeal currently pending in the Supreme Court challenging a ruling by a three-judge U.S. District Court upholding the 2012 Hawaii Reapportionment Plan against an Equal Protection challenge. The Plaintiffs assert that the 2012 Plan’s exclusion of 108,767 military, military families, and university students from Hawaii’s population count falls short of Equal Protection’s requirement of representational equality, and that the Plan’s 44% and 21% deviations from district population equality far exceed the Supreme Court’s 10% threshold for presumed unconstitutionality. Disclosure: we represent the Plaintiffs-Appellants.

The Brief in Opposition responds to the State of Hawaii’s Motion to Affirm, which, in turn was responding to our Jurisdictional Statement (remember, this is an appeal, not a cert petition):

“Nothing to see here folks, move along” is the State’s central theme in…

Continue Reading SCOTUS Brief In Hawaii Reapportionment Case: Exclusions From Population Are Not Reviewed Under “Rational Basis”

Here’s the State of Hawaii’s Motion to Affirm, filed earlier today. This brief responds to the Jurisdictional Statement, filed two months ago in the case now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court which challenges the 2012 Hawaii Reapportionment Plan. The State has hired some very big gun Supreme Court litigators (at who knows what cost to Hawaii taxpayers) to try and convince the Court that this case isn’t worthy of further review.

We represent the appellants in the case, who assert that the 2012 Plan’s exclusion of 108,767 military, military families, and university students from Hawaii’s population count falls short of Equal Protection’s requirement of representational equality. We won’t go into the details of the arguments in the Motion to Affirm, since you can read it yourself. Besides, we will be filing a short opposition with the Court, which will contain our responses. 

After the briefing is complete…

Continue Reading State’s Motion To Affirm In Hawaii Reapportionment Case