ISLAND VOICES
Turnout of voters should be higher

By Michael P. McDonald
Assistant professor of government and politics at George Mason University

It is with great interest that I read The Advertiser's "Vanishing Voter" series. I support increasing voter turnout, and your efforts to highlight the issue are commendable.

However, I disagree with your use of registered voters to measure the turnout rate. This is generally considered a poor measure of those eligible to vote, since changes to registration laws may affect the number of persons registered to vote.

Instead of registered voters, until recently the Census Bureau calculated turnout rates according to the "voting-age population" — everyone age 18 and older living in the United States. Using the voting-age population, the turnout rate in the 1960 Hawai'i election was 49.7 percent, much lower than the 96 percent among those registered to vote, as reported in your on-line graphic.

In your June 30 article, elections chief Dwayne Yoshina correctly points out that the voting-age population is not the eligible population, as it includes non-citizens and ineligible felons. Calculating the turnout rate for eligible voters shows that nationally, there is no decline in the turnout rate since 1972. Because of this research, the Census Bureau now reports turnout among the citizen-voting-age population, a step in the right direction to estimate turnout among those eligible to vote.

I only have reliable state-level voting-eligible estimates since 1980, but in that time, I estimate voter turnout in Hawai'i elections fluctuated between 44.8 percent and 52.1 percent voter turnout, with no decline. Over that same period, the turnout rate among the voting-age population fluctuated, with no trend, between 40.5 percent and 46.4 percent.

Links to voter turnout resources, including my projections of the eligible population for 2002 by state, can be found at http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm.

This is the good news: Voter turnout in recent Hawai'i elections is not declining and it is higher than might be expected since Hawai'i has a sizable non-citizen population. The bad news is Hawai'i's turnout rate ranked last in the 2000 election, but interestingly ranked eighth in the 1998 election.

Given the close race for governor of Hawai'i, I expect turnout in the upcoming election to be on par with 1998, and be one of the best in the country.