A Targeted Campaign To Register More Voters Comes To Hawaiʻi

The CEO of a national nonprofit says he’s hoping to get more Hawaiʻi voices heard in elections, especially people of color, unmarried women and young adults.

(Honolulu Civil Beat)– Mail balloting and convenient voter registration are under fire these days, both nationally and in the islands.

President Donald Trump recently announced a campaign to get everyone back to voting at the polls on Election Day. Heʻs also pushing to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship (such as a birth certificate or passport) when registering to vote in federal elections.

A subcommittee of the Hawaiʻi Elections Commission is calling for a return to voting at the polls — on paper ballots that would be hand-counted.

So you could say the Voter Participation Center is swimming upstream.

“We’re living in the time when a lot of folks are looking for any reason under the sun to keep people from voting,” says Tom Lopach, CEO of the national nonprofit organization that reaches out to certain people who are eligible but unregistered to encourage them to become voters.

The center has been doing this work since 2003, but has just entered the Hawaiʻi electoral pool for the first time as part of an effort to go national with its voter registration campaign.