The Independent View: Independent Party is Now a Qualified Party in Hawaii

Thanks to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for this post.

The Hawaii Independent Party has enough voter signatures to satisfy the requirements for a new party.

The party is led by former Maui Mayor Charmaine Tavares and Maui real estate agent Michelle del Rosario.

Former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who lost to Gov. Neil Abercrombie in the Democratic primary in 2010, has said that he would seriously consider running for governor as an independent if the new party is certified.

Del Rosario tells the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the party is an option for independent candidates to pool resources and run together.

Hawaii News Now reports that the party estimates it collected about 2,000 signatures. It needed at least 706 signatures from active registered voters or one-tenth of 1 percent of the number of statewide registered voters in the 2012 general election.

Independent candidates in Hawaii must run in the August primary. They must poll the lesser of 10% of the vote cast for that office in all party primaries, or the number of votes received by the lowest vote-getting party nominee.

When a minor party runs candidates in its own primary, it is easy for independents to meet this primary vote test. Traditionally, very few Hawaii voters vote in a minor party primary, so if there is a minor party candidate for a particular office, that almost guarantees that the independent candidate for that same office will outpoll the minor party nominee, and then the independent can be on the November ballot.

But when there is no minor party nominee for a particular office, the typical independent almost never polls enough primary votes to qualify for the November ballot. Therefore, many would-be independent candidates in 2014 will probably not file as independent candidates, but will instead file to run in the Independent Party primary, because if they win then they are guaranteed to be on the November ballot.

From the state co-chair, Michelle Del Rosario, of the newly certified Hawaii Independent Party (HIP):

"We are a broad based group of individuals, through out the state of Hawai’i who have decided to act and form a new independent party. My co-chair is former Maui Mayor Charmaine Tavares. Two, neighbor island wahine (women), ready to take politics as usual by storm and give back Hawaii government to the voters."