By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

The worst thing of all would be not to vote this Saturday.

The next-to-worst thing would be not to know who you're voting for.

And pretty high on that list of worsts would be to give your vote to a candidate for any of the following reasons:

The name seems like the name of someone who would be good.

You're pretty sure you heard that name on the 6 o'clock news and you kind of remember that it wasn't a story about an indictment or a scandal or a grand jury investigation so it must have been something good.

The candidate's first name, first middle name, second middle name, nickname in quotes or last name sounds like it belongs to a particular ethnic group.

This election year, there seems to be a proliferation of purposefully displayed ethnically diverse middle names. John Whatevers, who has always been known as "John Whatevers" is suddenly calling himself John "Keoni" Chun Kim Cayetano Whatevers. Well, maybe not specifically Cayetano, but you know what I mean. The practice extends to the way the spouse of a candidate is named in campaign literature. Long discarded maiden names and mother's maiden names are coming out of the woodwork.

It behooves us to go past the names and find out what these people think, what they've done and what they say they'll do.

The voters' guide published in yesterday's Advertiser and available online is a great place to start. It's the Cliffs Notes of candidates. There's more to each politician than can be expressed in their necessarily terse answers, but it's amazing how much you can learn about a candidate from their answers to direct questions about issues and experience. Even the instances where candidates didn't answer a question says so much.

Pay attention to the candidates who have served on your neighborhood board. Pay special attention to those who served on a neighborhood board and actually got stuff done. It takes real commitment to a community to sit through those long night-time meetings in the school cafeteria or park rec center and deal with pot hole and stop sign minutiae, not to mention the occasional angry community member. They do it all for no money and, frankly, no name recognition. That kind of stamina and service is significant.

Studying up for this primary seems especially daunting with all the state Senate and House seats on the ballot and the gaggle of candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, particularly on the democratic ticket. But the actual number of choices you need to make is quite small. Check out the worksheet printed on page 27 of the voters guide. It makes your homework much more manageable.

But read the qualifications and ideas first, and then look up at the name. Who a candidate is, is revealed by what a candidate thinks, not what he or she is calling himself or herself these days.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.