Beth Fukumoto: We Need To Improve How Hawaiʻi Chooses Election Commissioners

The drama at the Oct. 29 Elections Commission meeting wasn’t just another long day of testimony and accusations. It was a reminder that who we appoint matters.

When a commission behaves erratically or talks past the evidence, that reflects a selection system that prizes familiarity and faction over competence and clarity. If we want better outcomes, we have to fix the front end: how commissioners are chosen, what skills we seek, and what we expect of them once they’re sworn in.

That truth was hard to miss during the commission’s six-and-a-half-hour meeting — a marathon of testimony that ended with a vote to launch an audit of the 2024 general election and another vote to urge the Legislature to repeal statewide vote-by-mail. The commission had already asked for that rollback on Oct. 1. This time, despite dozens of testifiers defending mail voting as secure and indispensable, a narrow majority doubled down. It wasn’t a debate about new facts. It was a display of how nine people interpret their role in a moment flooded by national narratives.

Rather than revisit that debate, I want to look at how those nine people are chosen.



https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/11/beth-fukumoto-we-need-to-improve-how-hawaiʻi-chooses-election-commissioners/