Comm No 0011.01 - Section 13-1 - Definition of Vacancy - Resign to Run

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1. Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Hawaii of 1978, at 678. In explaining their underlying intent, the framers distinguish between officeholders whose offices were to be filled by an upcoming election and those whose offices were not then subject to election: Your Committee does not believe it would be warranted for a candidate to resign if the office he is seeking has a concurrent term. In this case, he is in effect resigning since, if he loses the election, he does not have an office to return to. He is not abusing his elected office by using it as a safe haven from which to make political forays and return if he proves unsuccessful. Id. (emphasis added in original). (page 2 of Opinion). The Attorney General also addressed the issue of the various beginning and ending dates of the terms for Hawai'i's federal, state and county offices. Nothing in the constitutional history allows us to conclude that the framers intended to distinguish between incumbent state legislators or board of education members or Office of Hawai'ian affairs trustees, whose terms begin and end at a general election and who would never need to resign if they were candidates during the last year of their terms irrespective of the office sought, and federal incumbents, the governor or the lieutenant governor, or elected county incumbents who were completing the last year of their terms but seeking offices with terms which begin chronologically before the term of the offices held end. Moreover, the Attorney General explained that "If relying upon a literal or "plain meaning" interpretation of "term" or the phrase "begins before the end" to distinguish between incumbents' whose terms begin and end at a general election and those whose terms do not, would lead to an unreasonable or unconstitutional result, that interpretation should be avoided. We believe that such a distinction is not likely to withstand the judicial scrutiny to which it would be put by a challenge based on the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause." Therefore, under Section 7, Article II of the Hawai'i State Constitution, the term of office is considered broadly rather than by a particular start and end date for each office. Thus, even though a Hawai'i State Senator is deemed to be elected on day of the election (November 6, 2018) and a Hawai'i County Council member term begins on the first Monday of December after their election (December 3, 2018), the proper interpretation of Section 7, Article II is that both the Hawai'i State Senate office and Council office end during the same term (2018). As such, a Hawai'i County Council member is not required to resign upon the filing of nomination papers for a Hawai'i State Senate office under Section 7, Article II of the Hawai'i State Constitution. IV. Conclusion. Based on the foregoing, Article XIII, Section 13-1 (f) (9) of the Hawaii County Charter is consistent with Article II, Section 7 of the Hawai'i State Constitution and a