A favorite example of understanding political reality is former Arizona Rep. Mo Udall's crack: “;The voters have spoken - damn them.”;

At first glance, it appears that here in Hawaii, the voters do not so much speak as murmur.

The first pass through Hawaii's Nov. 4 voting numbers shows that few who were eligible bothered to vote. A survey from the Center for the Study of the American Electorate put Hawaii's turnout at 45.3 percent, while the nation runs at 61 percent.

The high turnout states are Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, where between 72 percent and 77 percent of those eligible cast ballots.

Curtis Gan, spokesman for the CSAE, said on National Public Radio last week that Hawaii had the worst turnout in the country. And this is not a one-time slip; the cellar is where Hawaii voters usually reside.

Hawaii political leaders can't figure out why local folks don't show up to vote. Some suspect we have just given up.

“;The people have come to see voting as futile because of the self-sustaining dynasty of the Democrats,”; says Sen. Fred Hemmings, the Republican Senate leader.

Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, a Democrat, thinks our voter base is inflated with the names of people who are no longer living here and that makes a bigger base, skewing the numbers.

  There might be some truth to that. Glen Takahashi, who runs the Honolulu city elections, says between 10 and 13 percent of the registered voters are no longer at their listed addresses.

There's no chicanery, Takahashi says, it is just that Hawaii voters jump around a lot and they don't remember to change their registrations. But all 50 states play by the same federal voter registration laws and all voting lists across the country are purged under the same laws, so the playing field is level.

Finally, a very savvy analysis done by the National Journal notes that in blue states such as Hawaii, President-elect Barack Obama picked up more votes than did Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in his Democratic bid for president in 2004. But the real fall off was in how poorly Obama's opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, did compared to President Bush fours years ago. Hawaii had the biggest GOP drop. McCain got 38 percent less than Bush in Hawaii and Obama got a proportionately larger increase over Kerry.

The voter problem might be only among Republicans. They don't vote. If everyone voted, Hawaii might not be such a blue state after all.