It was a quick check of news updates on the Honolulu Advertiser web site that gave me the news on the attempt to pull HB444 up for another House vote. I didn’t check when it had been posted, but called down to the capitol and discovered House members were still in caucus, so it seemed like there was a chance to get there in time to witness the vote.

I called Meda, who had the car, and she left UH, picked me up, and we headed downtown. We found a place to park down by the post office, and were headed across the Iolani Palace grounds when a text message let me know they were back in session and preparing to vote. There was a light rain as we hustled past the palace and up the stairs to the capitol and entered the House gallery. There were quite a few people, but I wouldn’t have called it crowded.

The good news was that I had a camera in hand. The bad news is that I haven’t used its video feature enough to be comfortable with it. I managed to start the video rolling and caught the entire roll call vote. But I missed one critical step–Focus! So, unfortunately, it’s a little fuzzy. Maybe you can pretend that you’re watching the proceedings through tears of joy or, well, the opposite.

In any case, here’s the vote, as it happened.

And notice the strange silence after the vote was over and the results announced. There was no joyous outburst. Instead, it was quite subdued, almost a stunned silence, as if the count had been misheard.

Henry Curtis (Life of the Land) was also there and did a video showing more of the proceedings (available on Vimeo).