Question: How can homeless people vote in Hawaii? The voter registration form asks for both a residence address and a mailing address. How can they fill that out?
Answer: Homeless people can register to vote, as long as they can document that they are U.S. citizens, residents of Hawaii and will be age 18 or older at the time of the election.
The voter registration form requires that the registrant affirm that he or she is not claiming residency merely by presence in the state, but because they intend to make Hawaii their legal residence “with all the accompanying obligations therein.”
However, a conventional physical address is not required, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, which explains in its homeless-rights guide how homeless people can properly fill out the voter registration form issued by the state Office of Elections.
Question No. 5 on the form asks for the registrant’s “residence address,” No. 6 asks for “mailing address in Hawaii” and No. 7 asks the registrant to describe the “location of residence” if there is no street address.
The ACLU guide advises homeless people to leave No. 5 blank and to provide a general description of where they live in No. 7, such as “the bench at the ‘Ewa end of Ala Moana park.”
The mailing address (No. 6) can be a post office box, a willing friend or family member’s mailing address or the address of a homeless shelter, if the shelter provides clients a place to pick up their mail, according to the ACLU guide.
A valid mailing address is needed so that the elections office can mail the registered voter his or her precinct cards or absentee ballot.
Even more so than providing residence and mailing addresses, acquiring and keeping the proof of identity (U.S. citizenship and Hawaii residency) required to register to vote for the first time is especially challenging for homeless people, according to advocates.
The city’s website provides detailed information about how to get a driver’s license or state ID card. You can read more here: 808ne.ws/1qNKDvY.
Once at the polls on Election Day, most voters show a state ID or driver’s license to confirm that they are registered and eligible to receive a ballot.
Certain voters are required to show an ID, such as first-time voters who registered by mail and did not provide proof of identity and citizenship then.
People who have voted in Hawaii before and prefer not to show an ID (or do not have one) may ask poll workers to verify their identity another way, according to the ACLU. One common method is for the voter to state his or her place of residence as listed in the poll book, without being allowed to look at the book first.
Q: Not all of those noisy roosters are wild (808ne.ws/24gkKUl). Some people raise them like pets! Is that even legal?
A: Yes, but Oahu households are limited to no more than two chickens or peafowl per household, according to Section 7-2.5 of the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu.
Under Section 7-2.2 it’s a violation of the animal nuisance law when a rooster’s unprovoked crowing continues for 10 minutes straight or 30 minutes intermittently.
Auwe
It is alarming how Hawaii drivers are becoming more discourteous and less compliant with the rules of the road. Increasingly, people are neglecting to use their turn signals, far exceeding the speed limit, crossing over solid and double solid lines, being discourteous to other drivers, not using their headlights in tunnels, and behaving as if they own the road. What happened to careful and defensive driving? Come on, Hawaii, we used to be a courteous and law-abiding state. — J.T.
Mahalo
To the person who found my cellphone in the Kahala Mall parking lot across from Macy’s on April 16: Thank you very much. Your honesty in turning it in to mall security shows the spirit of aloha. You alleviated the anxiety I had about having to replace the phone. It was like losing a wallet with credit cards and all that personal identification. Your good deed made my sense of panic disappear. — A careless senior
CORRECTION
The headline on an earlier version of this story was incorrect. As the story explains, a person must list a Hawaii address in order to register to vote, but it need not be a conventional street address, according to the ACLU.
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