Honolulu Lite
The political power brokers fell right into my trap. When I proposed bribing people to get them to vote by turning every election into a million-dollar lottery, the idea was met by a deafening roar of indifference. Those in power don’t
want heavy turnoutsNobody stepped up and said that while the idea of an election lottery is idiotic, we do need to come up with a way to get more people to the polls.
In the 1998 governor's election, half the state's eligible voters didn't vote; that's more than 400,000 people. Hawaii had the lowest turnout nationwide in the 2000 general election -- only four of 10 eligible voters bothered to get their okoles into the voting booths.
University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle recently called this anemic turnout a "strange phenomenon" and "deeply troubling," which is the same way you could describe the weather anomaly El Nino and the political anomaly Al Gore. (Or is it Al Nino and El Gore?) Nevertheless, Dobelle believes poor voter turnout is due to too much closed-door decision-making in Hawaii.
He's either almost right or not completely wrong. Closed doors, closed meetings and closed books may be discouraging people from voting by keeping them uninformed and, thus, uninterested. But that is not because politicians are oblivious to the happy effect of sunshine on the inner workings of government. That presupposes benign ignorance on behalf of politicians and public servants.
I think there is a more sinister explanation of why 400,000 people do not vote and my elegantly whacky election-lottery proposal proved it.
Those people don't vote because the controlling political party doesn't want them to vote. The fact is that Democrats would rather only Democrats vote and Republicans want only Republicans to vote. In a Democratically controlled state like Hawaii, the party in power wants only those controllable Democratic voters to hit the polls, especially well-regulated Democratic voting blocks like the government employee and teachers unions. The last thing they want is 400,000 uncontrollable yahoos tossing votes around in a slapdash fashion. God knows who would be elected then.
Now if they simply told 400,000 people that they are not allowed to vote, there'd be a riot. So instead, the powers that be simply don't do anything to encourage non-voters to vote, historically resulting in nice, safe Democratic victories.
So Dobelle is kind of right. By blocking sunshine, voters are discouraged. And the Power People are just fine with that.
I, however, am not. That is why I'm forming a new union: The Honolulu Lite Non-Voters Association. The power of the HLNVA will make the HGEA, UPW and HSTA look like knitting circles. We will be the king-makers. My 400,000 members will become the most powerful voting block in the state. That is, once I actually get them to get off their duffs and vote.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com