WE enter a political unknown next Tuesday. Perhaps 100,000 more people will vote for governor than ever before in Hawaii. It will be uncertain until the final count where their votes will fall. The huge increase
in voter registrationNumbers are startling. Voter registration is up 25 percent to 601,404 since the last election for governor in 1994. Office of Hawaiian Affairs voter registration is up 42.7 percent in the same period to 108,163. Yet the state's population grew only 2 percent or so in that time.
There's new vitality in getting out the vote -- primarily by special interest groups -- that may affect all results.
In the Sept. 19 primary, we witnessed an unprecedented killing off of five of 12 Democratic state senators running for re-election. A sixth hung on by only 29 votes. In the same election, the number of voters choosing Republican ballots outnumbered Democrats for the first time in 36 years.
But Republicans must restrain their optimism. Hawaii primary election votes in many, many races have been poor predictors of the final result. Many voters choose ballots where the contests are and the GOP had a hot race for governor.
On Nov. 3 Governor Cayetano will be bolstered by the forces of our four Democrats in Congress and the mayors of Honolulu and the Big Island, whose help wasn't urgent in September.
No figures tell for sure who urged the new voters to sign up, but we can guess: factions vying to control the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which is growing immensely in wealth and importance; "yes" and "no" factions in the multimillion-dollar same-sex marriage campaign; unions -- perhaps government unions most particularly; businesses; the Republican and Democratic parties; third parties; individual candidates making sure their supporters register.
What will people signed up for one cause do about the others? My guess is most will vote. That heightens the uncertainty. How will voters who signed up principally to vote pro or con on same-sex marriages vote for governor or on another constitutional convention, or on legislative and county seats?
With over 600,000 registered voters, we will have at least 450,000 actually voting if we get the same 75 percent turnout we got in 1994.
That means the winner for governor will need at least 225,001 votes, probably more.
This is more than twice as many votes as either Governor Cayetano or Mayor Lingle got in the primary Sept. 19. It is 85,000 more votes than the 134,978 that were sufficient to elect Cayetano in a three-way contest in 1994.
Republicans in part blame their 1994 defeat for governor on the three-way race, which produced no majority. This year it will be a clear Republican vs. Democrat choice.
Each candidate is undefeated in seven previous elections. Cayetano was elected twice to the state House starting in 1974, twice to the Senate starting in 1978, twice as lieutenant governor starting in 1986, and now would like to make it two for governor.
Lingle won five successive elections to the Maui County Council starting in 1980 and two for county mayor starting in 1990. She knocked off some veteran politicians along the way. Both candidates have polls to guide them, but the only poll that will count will be the official one next Tuesday.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.