By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Tikboy Ababa, with the Wikiwiki Drive-Thru
Voter Registration program, offered Judy Bishop
information at the state Capitol yesterday.

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Volunteers adding new
voters through today

By Michelle Cournoyer
Star-Bulletin

Judy Bishop was not going to vote until a Campbell High School student crossed her path.

"It's important to be a part of your community," said 15-year-old Roxanne Basilio, a volunteer with the nonprofit Adult Friends for Youth.

She and 24 high school students kicked off the 1998 Wikiwiki Drive-Thru Voter Registration at the state Capitol on Tuesday. Drive-throughs were set up at seven sites across the state to help with last-minute voter registration.

The deadline was today at 4:30.

At the Capitol, students helped 515 residents join the voting pool. Sign wavers directed drivers to pull in for a three-minute registration stop.

"I had been thinking about registering, because I just moved here a year and half ago," Bishop said. "This drive-through is a good idea, and it's in a great location. It's a great reminder about the deadlines, too." The primary election is Sept. 19.

Drives on Hawaii, Maui and Kauai have been equally successful, says Wikiwiki project coordinator Cira Castillo.

Statewide drive-through totals of new voters last night reached over 1,200. Cub Scout Pack 64 on Maui and the League of Women Voters on Hawaii and Kauai rounded up 225 neighbor-island voters yesterday. Together with the Native Vote and Oahu Council of Hawaiian Civic Clubs at Oahu shopping malls, volunteers have doubled their total since the last election's drive-through, which brought in 725 new voters in two days.

"I am very pleased with the turnout," Castillo said, referring to the project, now in its fourth year. "This project is expressive of the way we do things in Hawaii. People have been driving up on mopeds, riding their bicycles and coming by foot to register."

This year's total voter base, with 576,800 on the roster as of last night, is up 8 percent since the last election.

But election officials said they are expecting a poor turnout at the polls. Their efforts to keep voters active are thwarted by the state's transient population. A significant percentage of registered voters have moved or are not active voters.

Chief elections officer Dwayne Yoshina said they account for a lot of "deadwood" in the voting pool. He could not provide an exact number of inactive or relocated voters on the roster but said voter response so far has been dismal.

"A lot of voter registration cards came back to us undelivered, so we know a lot have moved," Yoshina said. "There's a large number of registered voters of which we know a lot of it is deadwood, so the actual turnout will probably be less."