The Honolulu Star Advertiser reports that “An Oahu advisory council to the state Reapportionment Commission recommended Wednesday that the commission count nonresident military and their dependents as permanent residents when redrawing the state’s political districts, a position that puts Oahu at odds with neighbor island advisory councils.”
The implications of this are significant:
The decision could have political consequences. If the Reapportionment Commission chooses to exclude nonresident military and their dependents – as many as 70,000 people — it could shift a state Senate seat from Oahu to the Big Island.
Creating state legislative districts with greater concentrations of nonresident military and their dependents may also help Republican candidates, since those with military ties tend to be more conservative politically.
The issue of military residents influencing Hawai’i politics is a significant human rights question for Native Hawaiians and other Hawaiian nationals. There has been international outcry over population transfer in Tibet, East Timor and Palestine, where the flood of settlers from the occupying country threaten to inundate and overwhelm the self-determination and cultural survival of native peoples. This has happened in the past and is an ongoing human rights problem in Hawai’i. The statehood referendum in Hawai’i allowed American citizens, including military personnel, to vote on the political status of the Hawaiian nation, in violation of the international human right to self-determination. The current military expansion threatening Guam brings the same danger of settlers outstripping native Chamorros of their human right of self-determination.
The Oahu advisory council position is also at odds with the Hawai’i Constitution:
Madge Schaefer, who serves on the Maui advisory council and is a Republican, said voters were instructed before a 1992 state constitutional amendment that nonresident military were excluded from the definition of permanent residents for state reapportionment.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment changing the state count to permanent residents from registered voters. Republicans had filed a successful federal legal challenge in the 1980s against using registered voters as the population base to draw single and multimember legislative districts.
“It seems to be written in plain English to me,” Schaefer said of the voter instructions.
But military interest groups are using emotional appeals to argue for greater political influence for military residents:
Thomas Smyth, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who works with the Military Officers Association of America’s Hawaii chapter, said he would not want to see a bumper sticker that said: “Crooks count, but heroes don’t count.”
In a more recent version of the article, the Honolulu Star Advertiser reports that an additional consideration is where nonresident military personnel pay their income taxes:
Hawaii island, Maui and Kauai advisory councils have asked the commission not to count nonresident military and their dependents for state legislative districts, contending that many in the military do not pay state income taxes or vote in Hawaii because they consider themselves residents of other states.
READ “Panel recommends including military families when redrawing district lines” .
READ “Oahu panel wants military in count”.
The military is an occupying force, they do not vote in the state elections because they are not legal residents of Hawaii. They don’t pay state, city and county taxes and are normally not registered voters. Based on law, they are prohibited from participating in political activities at the local level.
Therefore, the military numbers should never be used for political purposes in Hawaii. You need to get more Hawaii lawyers knowledgeable about what an occupying force has for rights while in a sovereign nation’s land and be prepared to defend the sovereignty against those political leaders and organizations that are only out to benefit from the meandering process.