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Two hundred and thirty-five residents of Honolulu have had their residence addresses made public by the city’s elections office despite a promise of confidentiality.

The citizens were granted confidential voter registration under a state law that gives people facing life threatening circumstances, risk of bodily harm or an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy the right to keep their residence address private. Voter registration information is typically a public record.

In this case, the envelopes containing the confidential voters’ absentee ballots and the return envelopes they’re required to use both included what was supposed to be protected: their residence address. The addresses would be accessible to any of the 80 people the office hires to open the envelopes and anybody who comes into contact with the U.S. mail.

The city’s top election official told Civil Beat that his office was operating legally and had done nothing wrong.

“The confidentiality provision in 11-14.5 pertained to the lists prepared from the voter register,” Glen Takahashi, elections administrator for Honolulu, said, referring to the Hawaii Statute governing the ballots. “Absentee mailing, that’s not a list prepared from the voter register, that’s a different process.”

But the on “Confidential Registration” say: “Voter registration information declared confidential pursuant to this section shall not be released, even for election or government purposes; provided that the optional mailing address set forth in the confidential registration application may be released in place of the person’s residence address for election and government purposes.”

It goes on to say that, “In no event shall confidential registration be released without notifying the person.”

The elections office has not notified the confidential registrants, nor does it believe it has to.

This breach of privacy is an example of government promising one thing — that the optional mailing address provided by the voter will be the only one made public — and doing another. And then not telling anybody about its failure to live up to its word.

Any breach could be a serious concern for these voters, given that they have sworn that the revealing of their address could be life threatening and provided an alternate address, such as a post office box.

Under Hawaii law, voters who apply for an absentee ballot may also fill out a form to secure confidentiality. They are asked to provide an optional address that can be used in lieu of their personal residence. A voter does this by filling out an Affidavit on Application for Confidential Voter Registration form, part of which is pictured below.

The law says, “If the disclosure of the residence address or telephone number of a person would result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy or expose the person or a member of the person’s family to risk of bodily harm, the person may apply to the chief election officer or county clerk to keep confidential the person’s residence address and telephone number contained in the person’s affidavit of registration, or any list or register prepared therefrom.”

Individuals who might feel the need to take advantage of this confidentiality could include undercover police officers, a person being stalked or a victim of domestic violence.

But the office of elections contends that Hawaii law calls only for confidentiality when dealing with lists or registers prepared from voter registrations. Such lists are posted outside polling places and are also sold by the office.

When asked if there was any way to keep a personal residence address from not being public at all, Takahashi said: “I don’t know anything that exists like that in law.”

In fact, Takahashi said that the office’s refusal to not print personal residences on absentee ballot envelopes was an effort to maintain transparency in government. An effort, he says, Civil Beat should appreciate.

“You’re a transparency kind of person, right? I mean that’s why you work for Civil Beat. If I were ordered to be masking all of these address and whatnot, there would be no transparency in the process and it would be hard for people to have a confidential election process. That’s why we have a certain amount of transparency.”

Takahashi went so far as to say that it would be “dangerous” to have individuals who could keep their personal address completely confidential. Recipients of the confidential status must provide the election office with their actual residential address, but they are supposed to be kept private.

He also implied that confidentiality is a moot point.

“If there is anything to learn, there is nothing that’s absolute,” Takahashi said. “I’m sure you probably know, but for example, people request confidentiality or whatever and that’s fine, we grant it, we take them off the list and whatnot. But you also know that with real property records, you can go online and look up who’s the property owner at a certain address and whatnot. And so, as much as there’s confidentiality in one area, there might be other areas that it’s just as easy to find someone’s address.”

His point is that because somebody might be able to find personal information about the confidential voter in other ways, the office of elections shouldn’t be held accountable for maintaining the confidentiality of their information. This despite the fact that the voter has been promised privacy in writing by the clerk who individually approves each application.

City Clerk Bernice Mau agreed with Takahashi that the law didn’t say the elections office couldn’t list private residences on an absentee envelope.

She did, however, offer Civil Beat some advice on how the concern should be addressed.

“I don’t know how to solve this situation for you other than perhaps you can go back to the Legislature and have them rewrite the law and clearly state how they want it done or what their intent was. Because that’s the intent of this law, was to get these people off the voter registration lists that we provide to the public. We’re not an FBI agency,” Mau said.