The State of Hawaii Office of Elections is expected to certify the results of the primary later Friday.
One independent candidate who looks poised to make the general election ballot is Nathan Berning, who received just over 800 votes in the primary.
The Office of Elections says he lists a Florida address as his residence. Berning is an anti-abortion candidate, and an ad that ran on KITV during the week before the primary featured images of aborted babies and an image that appeared to be the late Haunani-Kay Trask speaking on the ad. Trask died in 2021.
When HPR spoke to Berning about the reaction from her family about the use of her image in this way, he said he didn't know who she was. He said the woman in the ad is an actress and didn't know anything about whether the ad was AI-generated. He said he would relay these questions to his campaign manager, who lived in Tennessee.
When the ad started running, Mililani Trask said she began getting calls from people who were troubled by the use of her sister’s image.
The Conversation spoke to Mililani, who has been busy preparing for the impact of the impending storm Lala but felt it important to let people know about the ad.
“I did what I could do; I did call the office of the candidate,” Trask said. “Pretty much, I was told that it was not their concern. I was shocked when I saw the misuse of my sister's image and the blatant misrepresentation by a candidate who not only appears on the ballot, but is not even a resident of our state.”
Trask said that she also called the Office of Elections to point out the problem, and they told her there was nothing they could do.
The Office of Elections told HPR that Berning did garner enough votes and may advance to the general election.
There is no requirement that candidates must live in the districts they seek to represent. Trask said this shows a huge flaw in Hawaiʻi's electoral system.
“Who is this guy? Does he live here? Has he ever lived here? Answer: No. He's running on this ballot, and who is the candidate? But how is it that our electoral system allows it, and how does it subvert what we're trying to do?” she said.
Trask added that her sister felt that abortion was a choice that a woman made for herself, and she did not support in any way laws that tried to regulate that.
“When women marched for the right to have abortion, Haunani-Kay marched with them,” Trask said.
Trask thinks that the use of AI-generated images and deepfakes violates privacy, specifically using images and voices of loved ones, which she said are sacred.
“When it is used to manipulate and impact the voting process, it becomes something that everyone should be concerned about,” Trask said. “And what we're seeing revealed here is nothing more than sidestep and racism — the misuse of my sister's life, her publications, her teaching, the lady that made the Center for Hawaiian Studies” at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 14, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
