The only sensible thing to do in an election is not to vote. Of all the ways to have a positive impact on policymaking, voting is very near the bottom of the list.

Much better ways, given our present system, are to be able to influence the decisions of whoever holds office — and not necessarily elective office, since the actions or inactions of people who administer the law is what really matters. We currently have a president who is quite willing to sign anything Congress passes and then simply ignore it. This is bound to inspire state governors to do likewise.

The way to influence policy is either to know policymakers and administrators personally (it helps to be related to them) and/or to give them money. In our present political system, especially in Hawai'i, effective policy influence is best gained on the basis of some kind of a personal and/or financial relation with policymakers and policy administrators.

Don't get me wrong. I am not necessarily a sensible man. I do vote. I have not missed a primary or general election since I was first able to vote. I follow politics avidly. But I vote only out of a sense of civic engagement. Voting is a politically meaningless but spiritually fulfilling act of social solidarity. You meet more diverse people standing in line to vote than in most other lines one can stand in, with the possible exception of the unemployment line.

But I don't for a moment think my vote counts in terms of what the effective public policy of my county, state, or nation (especially nation!) might be. For that, I try to know who is in elected office, who is administering laws and especially who is making judicial decisions. Because, ultimately, in our system "law is what the judges say it is."

Hawai'i being a small place where a lot of people know each other (and a lot more don't know anyone), a lot of people prefer to talk story with the people they know and see if policy can be affected that way. And for those people in the know, it works. For the rest, they can either vote or give up.

I'm not saying I approve of this system. But it is the one we have, and so if you want to influence policy, while it does no great harm if you vote, it is much better that you get to know people in power personally. And if you can pay them something on the side, so much the better.

Our system was designed to work this way. The federal system was specifically created by our founding fathers to prevent democracy ("democracy" being a system where each citizen has an equal chance with every other citizen to affect policy).

The federal government is extremely indirect and not democratic. You cannot vote directly for president, any judge or to amend the Constitution. All you can do is vote for someone who then might vote for someone you might like. Because of what is known in the trade as the "single-member district system," you have to choose one person from among many tens of thousands of very different people living in an electoral district to "represent" you. But how can one person really "represent" so much diversity? They can't.

In contrast, most countries have a multi-member district system, greatly increasing the chance that someone like you in age, gender, race, religion, political ideology, sexual preference or whatever it is that is important to you is available for you to vote for and has a chance of winning. In a single-member district system one person is supposed to represent everyone, and that clearly is not possible. So he represents the people and interests that really matter to him.

One big improvement in the current system would be to eliminate the single-member district system and adopt the multi-member district system instead (which Hawai'i once had until the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional). Even making that kind of change locally would require amending the U.S. Constitution, which is extremely difficult and your personal role in the process is utterly minuscule.

There have been suggestions that Hawai'i adopt things like initiative, referendum and recall. There is merit in discussing this, but unless something far better than any existing system is adopted here, it probably will be worse than what we have now. Of course, there is something better, which has been used experimentally here in Hawai'i, developed by Ted Becker, a former University of Hawai'i professor, and Christa Slaton, a Ph.D. graduate of UH, called "Televote." This would achieve many of the aims of initiative and referendum far more effectively.

And there is also excellent evidence presented by Lyn Carson and Brian Martin in "Random Selection in Politics" that choosing public officials by lot (as we do juries and the military draft) can be effective, much fairer and more representative than the present system.

However, Ted, Christa, Jan Huston, along with myself and many others, have demonstrated that direct electronic deliberative democracy (and administration and adjudication) is possible, preferable and popular.

In the meantime, while you are working on achieving these and other necessary reforms, the sensible thing is not to vote — unless you want to show you are a loyal team player, and there is great merit in that.

Jim Dator is a professor of political science and director of the Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies at the University of Hawai'i. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.