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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 13 of 42
<br />a half ago with the State Supreme Court had the voting on the -, on whether we were going to have a
<br />ConCon. And at that -, I think before the voting was actually done, the State Attorney General’s Office
<br />came out with an opinion and said blank ballots weren’t counted in reaching 50 percent. Then it went to
<br />the State Supreme Court, and they said that you did count the blank ballots based on the language there
<br />which, I think said something 50 percent of votes cast was what was necessary. And they said, well, if
<br />you get in there, and you leave it blank, but you stick the ballot in the box, well, that’s a vote cast. And
<br />the Charter, just to compare that, I think the Charter or saying 50 percent of a referendum, 50 percent -, I
<br />think it says 50 percent of the people voting on the measure, which is a -.
<br />WURDEMAN: Yeah.
<br />YUEN: Little different. And there’s an older Hawaii case that says that’s 50 percent of the people who
<br />actually, actually checked something off.
<br />WURDEMAN: Yeah -.
<br />YUEN: They don’t count blanks.
<br />WURDEMAN: The older case went the opposite direction of the ConCon case, which makes one
<br />wonder if politics got involved, but I wouldn’t want to say that.
<br />YUEN: But the wording is -, the wording of the two was a little bit different, that went to the -. So, you
<br />know, I think I knew what this meant, this 15 percent meant when we had it ten years ago, but in the
<br />light of what the Supreme Court said, you know, a year and a half ago, I might want to look at it again
<br />and see if it’s become something that nobody knows the answer to now and maybe it needs to be
<br />straightened up.
<br />WURDEMAN: Yeah, the whole question when we have one of these drives, and there’s always
<br />controversy, and I’ve seen it here, I’ve seen it in Honolulu, as to who, you know -. You got these
<br />thousands of signatures, and did they know? Was it explained to them what they were signing? How can
<br />that be assured? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a continuing problem.
<br />The next one, it seems like a very small thing, but it’s something that Mike Matsukawa pounced on. On
<br />Boards and Commissions, 13-4.
<br />HIGASHI: Wait a minute. Before you move on. On the initiative referendum. In voting, on the last -, on
<br />Page 24, designate spaces to mark the ballot for or against. Is that a problem? I mean, it seems to me it
<br />was a problem among the voters last time. I mean, is there any way of -? You know, when you write the
<br />ballot, and you got to vote for or against.
<br />WURDEMAN: People argue that it’s a problem because like the last time we had a negative kind of
<br />proposition where they were going to prohibit something -.
<br />HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah. You were for something, you were against.
<br />WURDEMAN: So you’re voting for means to prohibit it. I don’t know. Arguably, it’s a problem. I don’t
<br />know how you get around it. I think the way that’s worded is the last election, the irradiation people and
<br />the clerk and myself and the agriculture people all pretty much agreed that it said what it said, and it
<br />didn’t cause a great controversy.
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 5-26-99.html7/1/2011
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