Editorials

Friday, July 13, 2001

Hawaii should be next
to try vote by mail system

The issue: A federal court has
upheld a law in Oregon that requires
all voters to cast ballots by mail.

LONG lines of voters at polling booths on election day are an anomaly in the age of high technology. Oregon voters took a major step into the present three years ago by overwhelmingly approving an initiative requiring that all votes be cast by mail. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week upheld the Oregon law. Hawaii, which had the most miserable voter turnout of any state in last year's election, should be next in line in adopting elections by mail.

Only 41 percent of eligible voters in Hawaii cast ballots in the 2000 general election, about 10 percent below the national average and far behind Oregon's 60.5 percent. "We had a record turnout in the May 2000 primary," said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. "We were at 80 percent of registered voters in the general election. It was very clear that vote-by-mail reversed the trend of declining turnout."

The Oregon mail-in system works something like Hawaii's method of conducting elections of neighborhood board members. Oregon voters have two to three weeks before the election to return their ballots by mail or at centralized drop boxes.

A legal challenge of the mailing system cited an 1872 federal law requiring that elections be held throughout the country on the same day. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has permitted the absentee ballot process, which allows voting before election day. In upholding the Oregon law, the 9th Circuit ruled that the federal law requires only that the election be "consummated" by a certain day.

The Oregon system not only increased turnout by 10 percent but saved about $3 million per election by eliminating the cost of hiring poll watchers. Critics predicted that the system would increase the possibility of fraud, but no evidence of fraud was detected and the issue was not raised in the court challenge.

The success of the Oregon system in last year's election takes it past the experimental stage. A conservative, Virginia-based organization called the Voting Integrity Project plans to appeal the decision, but the 9th Circuit's rejection of the legal challenge is an important milestone that is likely to withstand Supreme Court scrutiny.

Internet voting may be just around the corner. Arizona voters were allowed to cast their votes through cyberspace in last year's Democratic presidential primary after an unsuccessful challenge by the same group that contested the Oregon law. Although the possibility of fraud would seem to be greater by Internet than by snail mail, Arizona election officials may have devised a system secure enough to be replicated in other states.

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Army brigade to boost
Hawaii’s strategic role

The issue: The Army plans to transform
a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division into
a more lethal, agile and mobile combat force.

The Army's decision to convert an light infantry brigade of 3,000 soldiers into what it calls an "Interim Combat Brigade Team" will be good for the national security of the United States and will expand the role of Hawaii in the military defense of the country. The Army's plan, to be effected over the next three years, should be welcomed by the citizens of this state.

The Army's decision means that Hawaii will become strategically more important as the United States begins a long overdue shift in military orientation away from Europe and more toward the Pacific and Asia. The new unit, along with three brigades like it in Alaska and the state of Washington, will enable the United States to project power across the Pacific into Asia more quickly and decisively than before.

Economically, the transition will bring an estimated $500 million in new defense spending into the state as the Army builds new barracks, firing ranges, maneuver areas, motor pools and other support facilities, and the Air Force expands its operations and buildings alongside the Army. Additionally, 480 more soldiers will be assigned here along with their families, which will increase everyday spending in the economy.

Senior Army officers say they will not need additional space for training, except perhaps some small parcels of land, but will need to make better use of the space the Army now holds, including Makua Valley, training sites in the Kahuku Range, and the Pohakuloa training area of the Big Island. They have planned extensive changes in training areas to accommodate the 430 new vehicles that will be assigned to the brigade, including 300 light armored vehicles that will transport infantrymen onto the battlefield where they will dismount to engage an enemy.

The advent of the new unit in Hawaii and the enhanced strategic value of the state will most likely heighten the already tense conflict between the armed forces and a coalition of environmentalists, cultural activists and anti-military people who seek to drive the armed forces out of Hawaii. Army officers say they are prepared to meet the legitimate concerns of their critics.

Now there is a need for the opponents of the Army and the other military services to take a wider and deeper view of their presence in Hawaii and to seek compromises with whom they, the forces, and the citizens of Hawaii can live.

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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.

Don Kendall, President

John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.com

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