Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary

Foreign.

Welcome everyone to the Judiciary Committee hearing this Wednesday morning. We have a couple of agendas. The resos, this is reso, today is the reso deadline filing day. So if we have a catastrophic failure on the Zoom side, we'll try to fix it because we don't, don't. We can't put it off until tomorrow.

We do have a two minute time limit on testimony both on Zoom and here in person. And first up on this agenda is Senate Concurrent Resolution 158 which started out as requesting the Office of Elections to convene a working group on automatic voter registration.

But we filed a a proposed SD one that would demand that the Administration follow court orders and the law in General. First up on SCR 158 is Judith Mills Wong for the League of Women Voters of Hawaii. And support Derek Turman. Like to testify or just. Okay, come on up. Come on up for Democratic Party of Hawaii.

Good morning. Thank you, Senator Rhodes. Good morning and thank you for having me. So this is we. The Democratic Party of Hawaii stands in strong support of this resolution. In fact, in just 14 hours we were able to gather 135 signatures in support from the Democratic Party of Hawaii.

I'm also a practicing attorney and while it just seems so obvious that this current presidential Administration should support and obey court orders at this point, we need to make a statement and we need to make it clear that State of Hawaii just absolutely stands with the rule of law court orders and encourages the Presidential Administration to respect and obey court orders.

All right, great. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Next up is John and Rita Shockley for Free Access Coalition. In support and LD Aduja for Environmental Caucus of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Also in support, Amy Agbayani for Hawaii Friends of Civil Rights. On zoom perhaps.

He's not present. On Zoom Chair.

Also in support, Osatui for Y State Teachers Association. And support Eliza Ryan Gill for Hawaii Coalition for Immigrant Rights. And support Abby Simons, Stonewall Cox, Democratic Party of Hawaii. In support, Nihoko Ito for Hawaii Women Lawyers and support. Okay, that's everyone who signed up to appear on Zoomer in person.

Would anyone else like to testify on Zoomer in person on this measure? Come on up.

Is this set for 158?

158.

Okay. The working group for ABR.

No. Well, that's the underlying result. We put out a proposed SD one that is focused on the administrations in General following the lawful court orders or court orders.

Okay, so this is this a lot of court orders part or talking about.

Automatic this Is the, this is the court orders part.

Okay, so the ADR.

No, we're, we're substituting this for the ADR.

Oh, okay.

All right. Well, I was going to speak towards the ABR. Is it something that now we kind of do that.

Yeah.

I mean, if you want to come testify on the ABR. But it's not that. That's not what's in front of us today.

You guys wouldn't mind? Sure. Coming up. That's great. I appreciate it.

Well, I can understand the. I can understand why you're here for ABR, because that was the original purpose of the.

Very confused. So.

All right, thank you. And my name's Mark Cook. So what I wanted to talk about is just dangers of automatic voter registration, just so everyone understands it. I'll give you just a very brief background on me. I've been studying election issues, ecosystem manipulation, fraud, etc, for going on over four years now.

I've traveled all over the country, mostly the mainland. This is my first time in Hawaii. But I've been paying attention to what's been going on here as well.

And what I have found is a pattern, a systemic pattern of huge vulnerabilities in the system that can be taken advantage of by sophisticated bad actors which can be outside your state, even that can affect elections inside your state, and it can happen outside the county to affect elections inside the county.

And it's even set up in a way that can allow elections to be manipulated from within the county. And the problem is with this entire system is that the citizens have been removed from the election process, and elections truly belong to the citizens.

But instead of the citizens running elections, now we have corporations and the government and all these other entities running the elections. And automatic voter registration is a tool that can be used in the hands of bad actors. It's, you know, disguised as a convenience.

But the problem is there are bad actors out there, and bad actors can take advantage of automatic voter registration in order to affect elections in ways that people don't understand. Because good people, good honest people are such easy victims for sophisticated bad actors.

And I would love to be able to spend more time with you or anyone to explain in detail what the true dangers of that are. Because I want you guys to be able to protect the State of Hawaii from any external bad actors. And if you don't understand the dangers of it, you could get bit by it.

And I'm, I'm here for a couple weeks. I'm more than happy to leave my contact information. I'm more than happy to answer any questions in two minutes is definitely not enough time for me to go over my research and findings, but I want to be able to help empower you as all I can.

Thank you very much. Would anyone else like, anyone else like to testify in SCR158? Okay. Seeing none Members questions. Thank you.

Absolutely.

Oh, just the totals were 53 in support, one opposed, and with one comment. I've got a question. Sure, go ahead.

Democratic Party.

Sure.

I'm sorry, I didn't get your name again.

Oh, Derek Turbin.

Derek. Okay, thank you. So, Derek, what are the, does Congress or the states, do they have any way of enforcing compliance with court orders if the exe, executive branch refuses to follow? Is there anything the states can do or the court?

I, you know, obviously we have, you know, rulings from our federal court system here. Here, here in Hawaii. And you know, I think it's just, there's just an expectation that there's compliance with these federal rulings, you know, here in the states when it is impacted by the Presidential Administration.

But are you aware of any historical precedents that have been set where a President said, hey, I'm not going to follow that court order? And just has that ever happened?

I, it's pretty unique, but we're, we're seeing it happen, you know, right before our very eyes.

And in fact, you know, Republican Members of, of the Senate have been kind of filling the air with misinformation regarding, you know, I think one Republican Senator said that, you know, how can just one judge overrule a Executive order from the President?

And you know, as an attorney, as someone who has a lot of experience practicing law, that is the whole basis of the separation of powers, of checks, and balances.

When the President steps out of line with an Executive order, the courts, the court system has to check that when it kind of runs against whether it's the Constitution, the rule of law.

And you know, I, I think it's incredibly important that at least we as a state show that we stand with the rule of law and we stand and support the separation of powers and the checks and balances.

So do you know of a historical precedent where a President said, I'm not going to follow this. And what was the outcome?

I, I think right now we kind of see where the President isn't following it and it's, it's chaotic. States don't, yeah. In the past, I, I, I think, I think we could, I could find some historical precedent in the past, but this is just so unprecedented. What's going on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator.

Other questions Members? Okay. If not we'll go ahead and move on to the next Bill on the agenda which is SCR 154 supporting the implementation of the recommendation from all cycles of the Universal Periodic Periodic Review by the United States Nation's Human Rights Council were applicable to the state. We did not receive any testimony in SCR 154.

Would anyone here or on the Zoom would like to testify on Senate Concurrent Resolution 154? Okay. If not, we will that that's the end of that agenda. If it's okay with everybody, we'll go ahead and roll into voting. Okay. On SCR158. This is the requesting the Office of Elections to hang on SCR158.

This is initially was requesting the Office of Elections to convene a working group and we put out a proposed SD1 which focuses on or demands that the Administration and this and any Administration follow law and accept the rulings of Quantum Court federal courts. So the recommendation is to go ahead and accept the proposed SD1 and that's it.

Just accept the proposed SD1. Questions or concerns if not.

Senator Gabard on SCR158. Chair Rhoads. Aye. Vice Chair Rhoads. Aye. Senator Chang. Aye. Senator San Buenaventura. Senator no. You measure passing.

Thank you very much. The other one scr154. Since there was no testifiers, I'm just going to go ahead and defer this one. Okay. That concludes our 9:30 agenda. Mayu is it okay if we just go on into the 931 agenda?

Sorry. Yes, that's okay.

Okay, so we'll go over to the 931 agenda.

This is a decision making only agenda Bill that reso was heard in a different in the Public Safety Committee previously this request the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and planning and designing the new Oahu Community Correctional center in Halawa to include circuit and district court facilities and establish a release procedure under which detainees or inmates upon release are transported to a site other than residential communities or public spaces.

Recommendation here is to pass as is. Questions or concerns? If not Senator Gabbard.

On SCR 26 recommendations passed and amended. Any no votes or reservations of the Members present.

Okay, thank you very much Members. Thanks for being here.

We are adjourned.

SA.