Hawaiʻi’s Legislature is tough to follow.

Lawmakers long ago exempted themselves from the state’s Sunshine Law that requires the public’s business to be done openly. Legislative leaders and committee chairs tightly control the process and what information gets out to the public. Legislation is sometimes killed behind closed doors without explanation. More than 3,000 bills are introduced every year and the session whizzes by so fast — in just four months — that it can be nearly impossible to figure out what’s really happening on important issues before it’s too late.

Now we’re making it easier for people like you, who care about what the government is doing but, let’s face it, are too busy just getting through your day to tackle a system as complicated and closed off as the Hawaiʻi Legislature.

Digital Democracy Hawai’i is launching today with the goal of fostering better civic engagement and more thoughtful decisions in the public interest. It uses artificial intelligence and other technology to track every word spoken in the Legislature, every bill introduced, every vote cast, every dollar donated to lawmakers by special interests and more.

Explore detailed legislator profiles, voting records and what happens at hearings on Digital Democracy.

Visit Digital Democracy

We know it’s not perfect yet so consider this the beta version and help us come in behind the technology to make fixes. We’ve set up a special email for that, which we’ll be monitoring closely: digitaldemocracy@civilbeat.org. Send us interesting things you uncover, too, so we can look into them.

We’re also hosting a Conversation & Coffee next month at our offices in Kaimukī to introduce the tool, the first in a series of in-person and virtual events we’ll be doing on this topic. Sign up to join us Oct. 24.

What’s The Point?

Digital Democracy is intended to be a portal where a general audience of everyday citizens can learn about the people and activities in the Hawaiʻi Legislature. Who are these lawmakers, what are their interests and ideas? Who is influencing them, or trying to, both inside and outside the State Capitol? And how do they line up with those special interests?

The original Digital Democracy was built in 2023 for CalMatters, a nonprofit newsroom in California’s capital, in collaboration with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and 10up, a global web development firm, and with funding from the Knight Foundation, Arnold Ventures and the Lodestar Foundation. CalMatters is now looking to spread the technology to other states — and Hawaiʻi is the first.

Readers can use the platform to follow legislative action on important issues and connect that action directly to lawmakers, their history, motivations and political ideologies. Our Digital Democracy website introduces legislators and displays the current year’s agenda on major topics. The technology tools collect data throughout state government about legislation, votes, money and politics as well as the transcripts of public hearings and floor sessions in a unique, searchable database.

It can cut hours of research time to minutes. The Data & Methodology section on the Digital Democracy site provides much more detail about how things are categorized and where the data comes from so be sure to read it.

Here’s an example of how it works.

One of the hot-button issues at the session earlier this year was legalizing gambling in Hawaiʻi. Legislators sometimes referred to it as sports betting or wagering.

Go to the Digital Democracy homepage and type “gambling” directly into the search box. Even better, try to think of other words to add to the search, such as “gaming” and “wagering.” It’s best to use the quote marks around the words.

The more search words the better, actually, and one mismatched word won’t mess it up.

“Top matches” pop up as soon as you type those words, but hit the return key to access an array of information.

In this case the list that comes up begins with links to videotaped discussion and testimony on the issue at committee hearings and floor sessions. Clicking on a link takes you straight to the point in the video where the topic is being discussed.

If you’re looking for a list of actual legislation related to your search words, click on “Bills.” By pulling up individual bills and clicking on “Status,” you’ll see that none of them passed this session.

You can also search for gambling legislation by clicking on “Directories” at the top of the Digital Democracy homepage. Then click on “Bills” in the dropdown menu and enter the search words under “Bill ID/Title Search.”

The gambling issue is a good example of how difficult it is to track legislation. The gambling measure that, in the end, got the most traction was Senate Bill 893, a proposal to grant 20-year licenses for casinos on Oʻahu. But it doesn’t come up in a general search of gambling because it started out as a “short-form” bill with basically no contents and a title that said, simply, “Relating to the Economy.” You’d have to search specifically for SB 893 in this case.

We’ve already learned many things from Digital Democracy. You can check out some of the highlights in the Top 10 and Bottom 10 lists on the homepage.

One thing that surprised us was how seemingly aligned lawmakers appear to be when it comes time to publicly vote on bills. Using the new tool, reporters Chad Blair and Matthew Leonard discovered that a whopping 98% of the time legislators vote yes on bills, whether in committee or on the floor. Blair and Leonard used the data as a starting point to explore why there are so few no votes in a Legislature that often seems at odds.

At CalMatters, reporter Ryan Sabalow focuses almost exclusively on stories informed by Digital Democracy. The platform helped him identify a piece about how public comment limits mean people who show up to testify are regularly cut off, sometimes before they say a word. Partnering with CBS News, he exposed how bills die when legislators don’t bother to vote, which built on an analysis by his colleague Sameea Kamal in another story showing that 2,300 bills in the previous two-year session had died without a vote.

Why Does It Matter?

It’s so easy these days to get sucked into the national political news and pay little attention to what’s happening here at home, especially in one of the bluest of blue states, dominated by one political party. People give up, they don’t vote, they’re convinced it makes no difference. But the most important decisions that affect residents’ lives are made in statehouses.

We’ve had a lot of impact in the last three years with our statehouse coverage and our “Let The Sunshine In” initiative, which aims to shine a strong and steady light on the Legislature, local government and the officials who drive the system. A quick search of “Civil Beat” on Digital Democracy shows how much our reporting has shaped the debate at the State Capitol and helped bring about positive change. Our coverage was mentioned dozens of times in the last session alone.

One example is a 2023 investigation related to infrastructure, in which Civil Beat had found that consultants on a project to redevelop Honolulu’s major sports stadium had been paid more than $20 million in state funds before construction even started. Reporters also unearthed $400,000 in travel expenses for such things as first-class flights, hotel rooms, meals at Waikīkī restaurants and rent for a condo. The story triggered a state audit that found most of those expenses violated state reimbursement rules and the contractor was ordered to pay the money back. 

The findings resurfaced this March in a Senate hearing on stadium redevelopment that led lawmakers to call for tighter controls on spending. You can watch or read that discussion on Digital Democracy:

If that peek inside the process intrigues you, you’ll want to bookmark Digital Democracy so you can see for yourself what your lawmakers are doing on the issues you care about — and get involved while things are still in play instead of after the fact. When the new legislative session starts in mid-January, the data will be updated daily.

Digital Democracy has the potential to hold Hawaiʻi lawmakers accountable in a way they’ve never faced before. We believe the eyes of everyday citizens on the public process will encourage legislators to make better, more thoughtful decisions based on what the people want, not what legislative leaders, lobbyists or other powerful interest groups tell them to do.