Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Most isle voters
plan to take part
in OHA ballot

Yet 38 percent say the
landmark election 'shouldn't
involve outsiders. It should
involve only Hawaiians'

---

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

Recent court action that allows non-Hawaiians to vote and, for now, run for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs will "take the heart out of OHA," said 73-year-old Bob McCaig of Poipu, Kauai.

"They haven't been able to do a very good job agreeing among themselves even though they're all Hawaiian," he said. "If you get one or two non-Hawaiians in there, it will tend to make it worse."

Still, the retired businessman said he will vote for OHA candidates on Nov. 7. "If I have the right to vote, yes, I would vote," he said.

McCaig was among those in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin/NBC Hawaii News 8 poll that showed 51 percent of voters plan to vote for trustees in the OHA election, while 38 percent said they would not.

The poll was conducted among 429 voters in a statewide telephone survey Sept. 5-9 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C. The margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

A poll last May showed 56 percent planned to vote in OHA races, following the landmark Feb. 23 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Rice vs. Cayetano case which lifted the Hawaiians-only restriction on OHA elections.

Last month, a U.S. District Court granted a preliminary injunction that has paved the way for non-Hawaiians to run for OHA.

Moreover, fallout from the Rice decision has created vacancies for all nine trustees seats, giving voters a rare opportunity to pick the entire board at one election.

Respondent Kim Yoshiyama, 37, of Ewa Beach said she needs to get up to speed on OHA candidates and does not understand why only Hawaiians got to vote for trustees to the state agency in past elections.

"Everybody should be able to have their right to speak," Yoshiyama said. "I don't know why (you would) separate between a Hawaiian and a Caucasian, Filipino or Japanese. We're all alike, especially when you visit Hawaii. It's supposed to be one aloha, alike."

Recent poll results show slightly more Japanese voters will not vote for OHA races this November than those Japanese who will. As expected, those of Hawaiian ancestry overwhelming said they plan to vote.

Edward Piho, 73, a retired Pearl Harbor and Kamehameha Schools employee, said OHA has not done much to help Hawaiians, but believes non-Hawaiians should not vote for trustees.

"To me, it shouldn't involve outsiders," said Piho, a Makiki resident who is Hawaiian. "It should involve only Hawaiians."

The poll showed 52 percent approved of the Rice decision, while 53 percent approved of the temporary U.S. District Court order that allows non-Hawaiians to file as candidates for OHA.

Christina Bartolome, 32, of Ewa Beach, said now that she will be handed an OHA ballot along with the regular general election ballot at the polling place, she will make the effort to vote for OHA trustees.

"I would like to vote for OHA because I think that it's my money that's being used," said Bartolome, a public school teacher who is on leave to raise her new baby.

"I wasn't born in Hawaii, but I've lived here most of my life, and I feel that I am sympathetic to the losses of the Hawaiian people. And I think that I should have a say in helping them restore some sort of dignity or economic repercussions for what happened," she said.

Meanwhile, nearly half of those polled favored a congressional bill that would establish a government-to-government relationship between Hawaiians and the United States. Another 25 percent said no, while 27 percent were undecided.

The Akaka bill was heard yesterday before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Hawaii's congressional delegation is trying to get the bill passed before Congress adjourns early next month.

McCaig believes nothing will ever come out of the Akaka bill.

"I think that's an impractical situation, and I think that they're just whistling Dixie," McCaig said.

"They're not going to get a Hawaiian state governed by Hawaiians. It's not in the cards."