Senate Judiciary hears wide-ranging bills on elections, bail, immigration and campaign finance; multiple measures advanced with amendments

The Senate Committee on Judiciary met in Honolulu and by Zoom on Feb. 7 to take testimony on a series of bills spanning elections, criminal procedure, guardianship funding, campaign finance, immigration legal services and constitutional amendment procedures.

The committee heard extended public and organizational testimony on Senate Bill 114, which would establish a presidential preference primary, and on SB 725, which would require judges to make specific findings about a defendant’s ability to afford bail. Both bills drew detailed comments from election officials, party representatives and criminal-justice stakeholders.

Scott Nago, chief election officer with the Office of Elections, introduced SB 114 and provided an estimate of implementation costs, saying, “You have our testimony in front of us or in front of you. Youre I'm going to stand on it, but just note that there is a cost of $410,000,0.0.” Opponents including Jamie Detwiler of Hawaiian Islands Republican Women urged the committee to reject SB 114, arguing the bill shifts control of presidential preference contests from parties to the state and would replace volunteer-run caucuses with mail ballots. “SB 114 will replace our in person presidential primaries with mail in ballots,” Detwiler said, and she asserted the appropriation in the bill should instead be spent for homeless programs and underserved communities.

Committee members asked Nago about timing and costs; he told senators the bulk of the cited $4,100,000 figure would disappear if a presidential preference primary were consolidated with an existing election date, aside from voter education costs for a new election type.

On SB 725, Jennifer Wong, staff attorney for the judiciarys criminal division, asked the committee to defer the bill pending the Judicial Councils ongoing penal-code review, saying the review includes a subcommittee on pretrial bail reform. "We…