The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission will reopen registration on Monday to allow more people to sign up by May 1 so they can take part in forming a Native Hawaiian government.

The move came in response to a request from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which announced last week that it will act as a neutral party and help facilitate the election of delegates and the staging of a Native Hawaiian convention once the roll is certified.

Registration had officially closed in January, but the number of names on the list continues to grow as the commission confirms the ancestry of registrants. As of Friday, 120,743 people were registered at the Kanaiolowalu website.

Clyde Namuo, executive director of the commission, said more people may want to register now that there is a timeline for the next steps.

"We felt that it would be perfect timing, because in the past, people have not been so ready to sign up because they weren’t sure when an election or a convention would be held," Namuo said. "Now that OHA has actually said we’re going to do this in the fall, I think it now gives people a greater sense of urgency."

People can register online or check their status at kanaiolowalu.org, also reachable at hawaiianroll. org.

A preliminary list of registrants will be made available for review from March 24 to April 4, on paper at public libraries and Office of Hawaiian Affairs offices across the state, as well as other Hawaiian organizations, Namuo said.

"We wanted to make sure that for those who may not be able to go online to check the list, they will be able to go to those locations," he said.

The list will include the person’s full name, city of residence and day of the month the person was born, but not the month or year. A previous plan to publish just the year of birth has been dropped in response to privacy concerns, he said.

"The lawyers are suggesting that rather than using the year of birth, which would tell people how old you are, we are using the day of the month that you are born in," Namuo said. "We felt that was sufficient to verify that it is you."

Once registration closes on May 1, the commission will continue verifying ancestry and issue a certified roll by the end of June, Namuo said.

People on the registry will then form a governing entity that could be recognized by the state and begin a government-to-government relationship.

"This is probably one of the biggest advancements in Hawaii policy as it relates to the native people of our state," said Michelle Kauhane, president of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. "We have more than 150 Native Hawaiian organizations that are members, and the issue of recognized sovereignty has been on our policy priority list since 2001."

The Kanaiolowalu registry initiative was launched July 20, 2012, after passage of a state law recognizing Native Hawaiians as the only indigenous people of the islands and creating the commission to identify them.

It has collected about 30,000 new registrants, Namuo said. The rest of the names on the list came from the incorporation of previous registries, such as Kau Inoa, Operation Ohana and the Hawaiian Registry.

People on earlier registries had to contact the commission if they did not want their names transferred. But few people exercised that option, according to Namuo.

"I would say it’s less than 100," he said. "It’s not been very many. They have every right to say, ‘I don’t want to be part of it.’"

According to the 2010 census, more than 527,000 people in the United States reported Native Hawaiian ancestry, including 290,000 living in Hawaii.