Hawaii officials say they plan to follow state law requiring mail-in voting this year while lawsuits proceed over President Donald Trump’s executive order that critics say would give the federal government unprecedented control over U.S. elections despite the Constitution’s guarantee that Congress and each state hold that authority.

State Attorney General Anne Lopez announced April 3 that Hawaii had joined a coalition of 19 attorneys general in suing Trump in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, saying his executive order is clearly unconstitutional and would impose new requirements, including proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote.

They argue the order could lead to a national database that could be used for immigration enforcement, cause fear in state election officials and sow chaos and uncertainty that could have a chilling effect on states like Hawaii with strong histories of immigration.

“We think it’s a piece of a larger effort to try to reduce the number of people voting that will chill the right to vote,” said Emily Hills, senior staff attorney for the Hawaii chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lopez said in a statement that Hawaii joined the lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order, in part, because it “intrudes on Congress’ and the states’ power over elections. This unlawful effort to usurp election authority will irreparably harm the states and interfere with the lawful exercise of the right to vote.”

The order also requires states to rewrite their ballot-counting laws to exclude absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day. In Hawaii, ballots must be received by county election officials before voting ends at 7 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted.

In the November 2024 presidential election, 860,868 island residents registered to vote and 61% turned in ballots.

Out of the 522,236 residents who voted, 92.5% — or 483,078 — cast their ballots by mail compared with 7.5% — or 39,158 — who voted in person at polling centers.

Even so, in-person voters inundated balloting locations on all islands on Election Day, delaying the first return of results for hours. Trump has encouraged his supporters to not trust mail-in balloting and early in-person voting, calling on them to turn out on Election Day instead.

Hawaii voters in 2024 overwhelmingly voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, who gained only 37% of votes cast statewide compared to Harris, who won 60% but lost nationally.

Since then, the Trump administration has persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track multiple cases, leading supporters of Hawaii’s mail-in voting to worry the court could decide in Trump’s favor ahead of the state’s Aug. 8 party primaries or Nov. 3 general election.

“It does seem like the United States Supreme Court has been expediting things at the government’s request,” Hills said. “Certainly anything on the eve of an election would be very, very difficult for states, not just Hawaii, to be able to cope with.”

Hills declined to speculate whether the Supreme Court will hear arguments — or make a ruling — ahead of either Hawaii’s primary or general elections.

“I’ve been surprised before,” Hills said. “So, I’m really not making any predictions. I don’t always see eye-to-eye with the way the current Supreme Court rules on things. But I completely sympathize with the state for not wanting to put time and energy and money into contingency plans because that’s time and energy and money that could go to other places.”

Concerns over Trump’s mail-in executive order increased after the Supreme Court last month gutted the Voting Rights Act by excluding race as a factor in drawing political districts.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law also joined the lawsuit challenging Trump’s mail-in voting executive order, saying it directs the U.S. Postal Service to determine who may vote by mail. It gives the Postal Service the power to “refuse to deliver ballots sent by anyone not included on newly created federal mail voter lists,” according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center. “It threatens criminal penalties for election officials, mail carriers, and others who send ballots to or deliver ballots from individuals the administration deems ineligible.

“Far from improving elections, this executive order would create chaos for election officials, erode public confidence in our elections, and block Americans from exercising their most fundamental right and responsibility as citizens — voting,” Brennan Center officials said.

For now, state Elections Officer Scott Nago said there are no backup plans for Hawaii to change course on mail-in voting ahead of any potential ruling by the Supreme Court.

“We still have laws we have to follow, which is the state law,” Nago said. “So we can’t just change without any change to the law.”

Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the University of Hawaii, called Trump’s executive order “a violation of the Constitution that says that only states and Congress have control over federal elections. The president has no role. The Constitution is pretty clear that this is not a power granted to the president.”

He agreed that Trump’s mail-in directive is part of a larger effort to take control of states’ voter registration data while intimidating state elections officers across the country.

Mail-in voting was originally pushed in the 1990s by Republicans in Oregon to “help voters get their votes in, which would help Republicans in Oregon,” Moore said.

The push for mail-in voting spread to become a bipartisan issue with both Democrats and Republicans arguing it makes it easier for voters in rural communities to cast their ballots.

Then, Moore said, “Trump got involved and started making these baseless claims that all mail voting is full of fraud or that noncitizens are voting, none of which has ever been proven.

“No one has found widespread voter fraud in the way that Trump alleges,” he said. “The irony here is that vote-by-mail is extremely popular nearly everywhere it exists.”

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The man accused of stabbing a teen in Kalihi on Monday is now being held on $100,000 bail.

44-year-old Jerold Matthews is charged with first-degree assault.

Patrol officers responded at around 10:40 p.m. to the Rose Street area.

Police say he stabbed a 17-year-old boy after the teen intervened during an argument between the man and the teen’s mom.

The teen was taken to a hospital in serious condition.

The 17-year-old was also arrested on allegations that he assaulted the Emergency Services Worker who was helping him, but he was released pending investigation.

Hawaii County Mayor Kimo Alameda announced Thursday that after more than two decades of advocacy, the 364-acre coastal Puna property known as Honolulu Landing had been acquired by the county for preservation.

The $3.7 million deal was made possible by the County Council’s unanimous approval of Resolution 286-25 on Sept. 17 last year. It authorized the Department of Finance to negotiate the property’s purchase using funds from the Public Access, Open Space and Natural Resources Preservation Commission, also known as PONC — a county advisory body tasked with identifying lands for purchase based on their cultural, recreational and ecological value.

Money for PONC acquisitions comes from a fund comprised of 2% of annual property tax revenue.

Honolulu Landing is situated between Nanawale Forest Reserve and Waiakahiula, comprised of 4,000 feet of rocky, undeveloped shoreline and a broad swath of deep jungle, making up a traditional Hawaiian land division known as an ahupua‘a. It is scattered with village complexes, burial sites, temples known as heiau, house platforms and traditional farming terraces — an archaeological record of Puna district’s past and the result of centuries of human habitation.

Although vacant in modern times, the property — known as a “wahi pana” or sacred place by many — is home to endangered species like the io (Hawaiian hawk), opeapea (Hawaiian hoary bat) and pueo (Hawaiian owl), as well as native trees like hau, kukui and hala.

Alameda’s announcement was celebrated by cultural practitioners, scientists and conservation groups, and especially by some lineal descendants of the area. Among this latter group was Lehua Kaulukukui, who said her great-grandmother was born on the property in 1876. The land, she said in past testimony supporting the resolution, is a part of her genealogy, reminding her that humans are “not separate from the universe.”

“We are genealogically connected to it — we all descend from that same cosmic origin,” Kaulukukui told a County Council committee last year during discussions about the purchase. “Honolulu Landing is part of that genealogy. Its walls, heiau, house sites and burials are not relics. They are living testaments to our place in the universal order. To disturb them is to break the chain between past and future, between earth and sky, between people and the cosmos.”

In a prepared statement shared with the Tribune-Herald, she thanked various county officials for their “leadership and commitment” in advancing the resolution past the finish line.

”This pivotal moment represents more than policy,” she wrote. “It is an affirmation of the enduring relationship between our people and this beloved wahi pana. Honolulu Landing holds the legacy of our Tutu, Mary Kaui Moke Kuamo‘o Keli‘ipio, and generations of ohana before her who lived in deep alignment with this aina. We recognize this action as a meaningful step toward the protection and preservation of Honolulu Landing, ensuring that its cultural, historical, and spiritual significance remains intact for future generations.”

The land got its name in the early 20th century when it served as a hub for interisland commerce. From the early 1900s up until the 1940s, cattle were driven across the lava field shoreline and made to swim out to waiting steamships, which would hoist the animals onboard before beginning their journey back to Oahu. Before that, a black sand beach resulting from the 1840 Nanawale eruption and lava flow created an ideal spot for launching canoes along an otherwise rocky, treacherous coast. Honolulu means “sheltered harbor” or “calm port” in the Hawaiian language.

Local activists also celebrated the good news, like former County Council member Eileen O’Hara, who currently serves as the executive director of Pahoa-based environmental nonprofit Malama O Puna. O’Hara lives in the Hawaiian Shores subdivision right up the coast from the now-preserved land, and has been petitioning the county for its protection since it landed on the inaugural PONC list back in 2006.

“I’m just really, really happy,” she said. “I’m happy for future generations. I feel like I can point to this and say I did something meaningful — really meaningful — for my community. To me, it’s just thrilling to succeed in this long-term endeavor.”

The property was previously slated for development by Nani Kahuka Aina LLC, which had owned it since 2006, but these plans didn’t move forward. Then it was listed for sale in the summer of 2025. This could have resulted in the property being used for the construction of a new coastal subdivision along Old Government Beach Road, posing a threat to its archaeological sites and botanical wealth.

“It’s very important — we don’t want to see more development down here,” O’Hara said. “Just imagine 200 one-acre lots being developed on that property, and the additional traffic that would cause. It would not be something that would be a benefit to anybody.”

The land’s potential for archaeological study, she said, is a critical reason why it should be left as open space.

“That is why it’s so important to preserve it, because it’s very much still an intact village up there,” she said. “I mean, it’s grown over and there’s a lot of new vegetation, but you can uncover a lot as you get further away from the road. It’s pretty exciting to think of what we might find.”

She said the lessons that the property’s “living record of the past” could teach contemporary Hawaii Island residents about self-sufficiency and “malama aina” are most important.

“This takes us back and allows us to look at how the host culture dealt with these lands,” she said. “They lived here for centuries, and they had a population that may have exceeded what we currently have on the Big Island by some estimates. And they were self-sufficient and lived off the land, and we’ve rolled backwards.”

Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com.