Democracy by the few may be Hawai'i's fate

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer

U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye is arguably the most popular political figure in Hawai'i, and he easily won his last campaign with the votes of three-quarters of the people who went to the polls.

Only about half of those registered to vote and only about 42 percent of those eligible to register supported Inouye in 1998.

Gov. Ben Cayetano became governor in the same election after getting more votes than his opponent, Linda Lingle. But he won with less than half the votes cast and a third of the votes cast by registered voters. Just 204,206 of roughly the 765,000 Hawai'i adults eligible to vote — about 27 percent — supported Cayetano.

Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris won reelection in 2000, pulling half the votes cast. But his 94,067 votes amounted to only 21 percent of Honolulu's 444,945 registered voters in that election. Of about 560,000 eligible O'ahu voters in 2000, Harris received the vote of only 17 percent.

Hardly a mandate.

Hawai'i's election participation has plummeted from among the best voter turnouts in the nation in the 1960s to the worst of any state in 2000. When you consider the numbers based not just on the percentage of registered voters who stayed home, but on the actual number of adults eligible to be voters, the troubling conclusion is that in some races, some politicians are put in office by less than 20 percent of the electorate.

That means that in a room with 100 voting-age people, 20 are making the decisions that will affect taxes, education and social policy.

In a government that's supposed to be of, by and for the people, fewer people are bothering to participate.

"There is obviously a fundamental concern," said Shunichi Kimura, Big Island mayor from 1969 to 1974 and a former judge and University of Hawai'i regent.

"Our system of government is based upon everyone eligible participating," said Kimura, who now lives in California. "The main concern is one of participating in the government from potholes to zoning and the myriad things that government does or does not do."

Kimura said he believes that when the average citizen fails to participate in government, organizations — from labor unions to corporations to groups with a social agenda — are able to exert more influence than their size justifies.

The impact of elections in which few participate can reverberate across district lines or even across the state when public officials abuse their positions. Several of the state's most notorious recent political scandals involve politicians who were elected by a relatively small number of people.

Consider former Honolulu City Councilwoman Rene Mansho, who is serving a year in prison for theft. She was elected to her seat in Central O'ahu by just 43 percent of those who voted in the 1998 election. She got the support of 11,041 out of 53,027 registered voters in her district, a mere 21 percent.

Former Honolulu Councilman Andy Mirikitani is serving more than four years of federal prison time for public corruption. In his last election in 1998, there were 42,179 registered voters in his district in central Honolulu. He got 12,352 votes — 44 percent of the votes cast and 29 percent of registered voters.

Notably, in the last elections of Mansho and Mirikitani, large numbers of voters left their ballots blank.

Unfortunately, voters seldom have enough information about candidates to weed out bad ones, and it's not clear that more participation will result in better politicians, said University of Hawai'i-West O'ahu history professor Dan Boylan.

"No matter what you know about the political process, you still know the candidates only superficially," Boylan said. "In a way, most of us who vote don't know much about the people we vote for."

And when the cases of politicians gone bad get publicized, it may serve to further turn off voters, particularly younger people.

"The younger ones are not interested because they're doing (financially) OK, or they say that politics is dirty," said veteran Kaua'i political figure Turk Tokita, who has helped organize Democratic campaigns for decades. "We tell them, why don't you get involved and clean things up, but they turn away."

In their most recent elections, the mayors of the four counties averaged a little more than a third of registered voters in their counties. Two — Maryanne Kusaka on Kaua'i and Kimo Apana on Maui — received more than half the votes cast, but a minority of those registered and an even smaller number of those eligible.

At the time of the general election of 2000, Hawai'i had more than 1.2 million residents. Of these, the state Office of Elections estimates perhaps 780,000 or 65 percent could have voted if they'd chosen to register and show up at the polls. The others are younger than 18, or non-citizens, or institutionalized citizens, such as felons.

In fact, 637,349 did register — 82 percent of the eligible population. And 371,379 voted.

That amounted to 31 percent of all residents, 48 percent of eligible voters and 58 percent of registered voters.

Inouye's vote total represented the vast majority of those who submitted their votes, but less than half of those qualified to vote. And when Cayetano defeated Republican Linda Lingle by a tiny margin in 1998, he ended up with only a third of registered voters and perhaps a quarter of those eligible to vote.

Some argue that there is not necessarily a problem in Hawai'i's miniscule voter turnout.

Boylan said he believes many non-voters neglect voting simply because they're sufficiently comfortable, and that they'll come back to the polls if they're not.

"When the people aren't happy, you see a real spike in voting. They did it in 1933, in 1954, in 1959," he said.

Boylan said he isn't worried as long as it is comfort that keeps voters away in good times, rather than feeling alienated.

"If they really believe that, then that is symptomatic of a democratic culture that has broken down," he said.

Another argument holds that the democracy is better off if the many people who do not pay attention to candidates and issues stay away from the polls.

"I am more concerned that we have enough people going to vote who understand enough to make enlightened choices. That's the basis of democracy, right? An enlightened electorate, not a big one," said Bill Daly, head of Voter Contact Services, a firm started in Honolulu and which provides candidates across the nation with computerized voter lists.

"I think a lot of people don't vote because they simply don't have a clue who to vote for," Daly said. "They have never even heard of 90 percent of the people on the ballot ... No wonder they feel dumb when they go to vote, and why should they do it? And why should we want them to?"

Former Big Island Mayor Kimura doesn't accept that.

"I've heard that argument, and there's a certain amount of emotional logic to it, but I have a real problem with that," Kimura said.

If the majority of citizens avoid the polls, the result may be that organized special interest groups will have an outsized voice in public affairs, he said.

And while those organizations have every right to participate, Kimura said that the citizens have more than a right — they have a responsibility to participate.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.