Democrats connive
By James V. Hall
to keep controlTHE small box titled, "Who is voting?" with the Star-Bulletin's June 16 story, "Isle GOP targets new voters," actually has quite a story behind it. It is the story of how the Democratic Party of Hawaii is never satisfied with having an overwhelming majority of seats in the Legislature, but connives constantly to capture 100 percent of the seats.
The 1968 Con Con could be called "the reapportionment convention," because it was held to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that Hawaii's Legislature was malapportioned and did not conform to the U.S. constitutional standard of "one man, one vote."
The 1968 delegates, using model constitutional language, devised an exceedingly fair and workable system. It was so fair that even Republicans started getting elected.
After awhile, though, the Democrats realized that the Constitution had to be amended to keep the playing field from getting "too level."
After the 1978 Con Con, which gave us John Waihee and Jeremy Harris, the Democrat-controlled Legislature fought to keep the public from participating in any additional Con Cons.
This was done partly to counter the Con Con's effect of creating new political personalities who might challenge incumbents, but also to prevent any reform of constitutional amendments that the Legislature maneuvered to protect the Democrats' overwhelming majority.
A case in point is the voter base by which legislative districts are determined. The box in the Star-Bulletin story notes that there are 10,751 registered voters in the Kahala-Maunalani Heights district (traditionally Republican) and only 3,844 registered voters in Kalihi-Kai (traditionally Democrat).
This meant that voters in Kalihi had three times the representation of someone from Kahala. This isn't one man, one vote.
The voter base prescribed by the 1968 Con Con was the registered voter base. That meant that every district should contain approximately the same number of registered voters.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the registered voter base was constitutionally permissible but constitutionally "suspect." Nevertheless, it became law in Hawaii.
The Supreme Court said the base was "suspect" because the Constitution also provided that the lieutenant governor serve as chief elections officer and therefore would be in charge of voter registration.
The Supreme Court justices knew what they were talking about. Every lieutenant governor since 1968 has been a Democrat and, coincidentally, every single state-sponsored registration drive has been held in Democratic districts only.
All this time, Republicans had no choice but to hold their own registration drives in Republican districts. To the chagrin of the folks in the lieutenant governor's office, the GOP fared much better than they did.
That's probably one reason that the state severely restricts registration drives by community groups (Star-Bulletin, June 16, "Voter registration forms are limited by the state").
It soon dawned on the Democrats that, if they could get rid of the voter registration base and substitute another base, they wouldn't have to worry quite as much about registration.
The Legislature promoted a general population base amendment to determine legislative seats. It passed, barely, because the public didn't fully understand the implications of such a change.
This is only one of many compelling arguments why the people of Hawaii should have an opportunity to address these issues during a Constitutional Convention.
Much of our Constitution deals with political structures. When we allow the Legislature solely to deal with these issues, it is another case of letting the fox guard the hen house.
James V. Hall is an author and former
executive director of the Hawaii Republican Party.