On February 15, the Hawaii Senate Judiciary and Government Operations Committee passed SB 223 unanimously. As amended, the bill makes it much easier for a political party to exclude candidates from running in that party’s primary. Current law says that if a party believes a candidate in that party’s primary is not a bona fide member of the party, the party can go to court to try to prevent the candidate from appearing on the party’s primary ballot. The bill changes the procedure so that the state chair of a party can prevent any candidate from running in that party’s primary. No lawsuit would be needed.

The original contents of SB 223, to legalize write-ins, have unfortunately been taken out of the bill.

The bill says that an excluded candidate would be permitted to run as an independent candidate, without having to do a completely new petition.