On April 7, Hawaii Governor David Ige signed HB 1471, which slightly eases the petitioning procedure for newly-qualifying parties. The old law has a column on the petition for the signers to show their entire birthdate. The bill deletes the “year” column, so in the future, signers will only need to show the month and date of their birthday.

This is the second ballot access improvement bill that has been signed into law this year. The first was the Oregon bill, easing the registration requirement for a party to remain ballot-qualified.