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Selection of president has become a mystery

Please enlighten me. Who is actually selecting our next president -- the courts, the politicians or the media? Or the Florida secretary of state so eager to hand the White House to her choice?

I was under the impression that, under a democracy, the government is selected by the people and for the people. Who is the choice of the majority of the people?

We are being totally ignored. It almost resembles the doctrine of a communist country, where the masses have no say.

Al Silva

'Regular people' want votes counted right

A Nov. 28 letter from Pastor Gary Langley admonished Vice President Gore and, by extension, citizens who voted to elect him president. Langley wrote, "The rest of us regular folks in America know exactly what a vote is, and we know Daley-style vote theft when we see it." Langley implied that those citizens who support the ongoing legal proceedings must not be "regular folks."

He couldn't be more wrong. Millions of "regular folks" want to be sure that their votes were counted correctly, that citizens were not discriminated against and denied access to voting booths, and that the prevailing candidate is truly the president-elect and not the president-incorrect.

Claudia Parras
Lakewood, Calif.

Quotables "I will work every single day to show...your vote has not been wasted." Harry Kim NEW MAYOR OF HAWAII COUNTY WHO WAS VICTORIOUS IN HIS FIRST RUN FOR PUBLIC OFFICE In his brief inauguration speech at Hilo's Civic Auditorium "There's a greater conservative mood here, and Harry himself is a very conservative guy. I'm not sure that's conducive to economic development." Dante Carpenter FORMER MAYOR OF HAWAII COUNTY WHO WAS FAMOUS FOR HIS PRO-DEVELOPMENT STANCE Questioning whether the new administration will be good for the economy

Military votes were shot down by Gore

Has the Gore campaign no decency? Its intent to "make sure every vote is counted" mocks its own extraordinary efforts to ignore absentee ballots sent in by members of the military.

Gore's army of lawyers descended on Florida like locusts, armed with five pages of instructions on how to disqualify ballots. Over 1,400 absentee ballots, mostly from the military, were disqualified on the suspicion that they would lean to Bush.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf called it "a sad day for our country" when service members discover they are denied the right to vote because of a technicality.

Democratic election officials want pregnant or nearly pregnant chads to count but consign unwanted military absentee ballots to partial-birth abortions. How very Democratic.

Carol R. White

A football analogy to this election mess

In the last seconds of the Florida Super Bowl, the football hit the goal post and barely missed scoring the points needed by the Democrats to win. The attempt was called "no good" by the referees. Result: The Republicans won by one point.

At least it seemed like the Dems lost and the Repubs won. But instantly a swarm of lawyers with tape measures swarmed onto the field and objected, saying the goal post was actually a half-inch off exact positioning. Had it been where it was supposed to be, the ball wouldn't have hit the post and gone foul, they complained.

It had been the intent of the kicker to avoid the post and, through no fault of his -- through mistaken placement of the goal posts -- the kick did not go where it was intended to go.

Therefore, the Dems ought to be awarded those points, they argued. Or the kick should be redone with the goal posts moved half an inch. The game needed to go into overtime!

It didn't matter that the goal posts had been in exactly same spot for 20 years. No matter: The Dems declared victory because it had been the intent of the kicker to successfully kick the ball.

Betsy McCreary

Theory behind bus system should be tested

Thank you for including the most important point that I brought before the Honolulu City Council in your Nov. 30 story on the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan.

The 1,600 vehicles an hour that will be forced off Kapiolani by the BRT comes from projections from the city's Transportation Office, with the CityTram taking up the two middle lanes of Kapiolani during the afternoon peak at the Piikoi intersection.

This figure underestimates the total negative effect of the CityTram for two reasons:

There is a second spur that snakes through Kakaako before going down Ala Moana Boulevard on its way to Waikiki. This second spur will also evict two additional lanes of traffic, thus about doubling the Kapiolani effect.

My testimony also described the implausibility of expecting 2,400 vehicles an hour to pass in the remaining two lanes on Kapiolani, when the public must still share the right lane with regular city buses that will be making their regular frequent stops there.

I also described how unreliable the BRT would be, since any major accident at any of its intersections will bring this billion-dollar system to a standstill. Nobody benefits from gridlock.

That is why I again call for a scientific approach of testing the city's assumption that 2,400 vehicles an hour can flow through these two remaining lanes. This can be done by coning off the proposed BRT lanes for a day or two, and seeing the impact.

I believe that such a test will quickly point to the need for adding new, protected rapid transit lanes without taking existing lanes out of service.

The next step should be updating the light rail alternative by looking at successful systems such as Vancouver's Skytrain, BART in the San-Francisco/Oakland area, and the monorail at Epcot Center in Florida.

Wally Bachman
Science Advisor
Citizens Advocating Responsible Education

Good sportsmanship portended victory

Congratulations to the Kahuku football team for winning the state championship title. I started watching the high school playoffs as they aired on TV, and noticed that -- although I didn't have the opportunity to see them all -- Kahuku stood out from the rest.

Why? Because its players physically assisted others on their feet after the whistle had blown, whether teammates or opponents. I was quite impressed by that.

It was a great job by the players and coaching staff, who made Kahuku exceptional and outstanding in more ways than one.

Rae Marie Fujioka
Mililani

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