Beppie Shapiro has had an active life in Hawaii, both professionally and as … an activist!

Now age 70, Shapiro is president of the League of Women Voters of Hawaii, whose several hundred members are committed to “making democracy work” at all levels — county, state and federal.

According to its website, the nonpartisan all-volunteer group, founded by Marion and Allan Saunders in 1948, works on issues such as “election processes, government transparency and accountability, voter education, public education, gambling, transportation, environmental quality, campaign finance reform and others.”

It also provides, through its website at www.lwv-hawaii.com, “records of legislative testimony, policy analyses and reports, and information for voters about candidate statements, voter registration, and finding your national, state and county voting districts and candidates.”

With chapters on Oahu and Hawaii island, the group is funded by members’ dues and donations, plus fees earned by running elections for unions, condominiums and other organizations.

Nationally, the group was formed in 1920 to help women exercise their newly acquired right to vote and consisted of just females; later, men were invited to join.

Shapiro’s professional career included working as a computer programmer, then helping for 30 years to improve educational and health outcomes for disadvantaged young children, including as coordinator for the Early Head Start program at low-income housing projects and as program administrator and researcher for the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Shapiro’s own education includes earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tufts University in New Orleans, two master’s degrees from UH, in mathematics and counseling, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology, also from UH.

Shapiro is the mother of two adult children, a daughter and a son, and lives in Maunalani Heights.

QUESTION: How do you think this latest round of city, state and federal elections has been going?

ANSWER: I guess our prime concern in the League is voter participation, voter registration and voter turnout. As I’m sure you know, Hawaii has one of the lowest voter turnout rates and lowest rates of registration in the country. The state’s rates of voting are quite low, and we’re very concerned about that because in many elections only, like, 20 percent of people have been able to affect who gets elected.

Q: What do you think is the reason for that?

A: I think it’s a combination of a lot of factors. I think that we have — and this is not based on statistics, by the way — I think we have a lot of voters who would vote for people in the Democratic Party, and they rightly have been able to perceive for many years that in the general election, probably the person who represents the Democratic Party will be elected. That has been our history, so I think that maybe that has made people complacent.

I think also it’s increasingly hard for voters to know how politicians stand on the issues that might be important to a voter. Opposing candidates give out some misleading and out-of-context information about their opponents, and many candidates, I’m sorry to say, at all levels, resist making clear statements on some controversial issues, because they don’t want to alienate potential voters. So it’s hard.

Q: So part of it is that people just don’t feel like their vote will make a difference?

A: I think that may be true … and people probably have become cynical about elections. I think when people perceive that individuals or organizations that are very wealthy can have a great influence on how decisions are made, not only on how elections are decided, with political advertisements, but how decisions are made after the fact, by lobbying, it may make voters cynical about how much their individual vote counts.

Q: Do you think there will be a big voter turnout this election, or a bigger one than usual — especially considering the issues at stake?

A: I would always hope so. There have often been a lot of issues on the ballot that were important to voters. This time, there are some very critical decisions that these people are going to make — very critical for the state.

Q: If there was a bigger turnout than usual, who do you think is going to benefit the most from it?

A: I would not venture to guess. People should realize that even though money influences, individuals do have a lot of power in things; the individual votes are what get counted.

Q: Are you surprised at how the Democratic Party of Hawaii seems to have fractured so much over issues like rail and environmental stewardship?

A: Surprised? No. I think Hawaii has had such an overwhelmingly Democratic vote that politicians with a lot of different viewpoints have found a home in the Democratic Party because that was the place that you could be successful seeking electoral office. Linda Lingle, of course, is a prominent exception from that. So I think it’s not surprising that we have a wide variety of issues and preferences within our Democratic Party.

Q: What do you think about voting by mail and early walk-in voting?

A: Oh, the League is very much in favor of that.

Also, we’re very thrilled that the Legislature this time adopted a law that will allow Hawaii to have online voter registration. Many people do everything on the Web, and having voter registration available online will, I think, really improve rates of registration, hopefully among the young especially.

We do support permanent absentee balloting, which we have in Hawaii, and that’s great.

Voting by mail, I’m very familiar with Oregon, where it works very well.

We also support voting online, but that is a system that has yet to be developed adequately. As far as I know, there’s no system that’s been developed that would be acceptable in terms of security. But we support the concept and I hope it will be developed.

Q: Is the League happy with how the latest voter reapportionment turned out?

A: I think the (reapportionment) commission did an excellent job. I think it was very difficult, given the United States Constitution and the Hawaii constitutional decisions that we’ve made in the past, about who is going to be counted and who isn’t. It put the commission in a terrible position. We’d like to clean that up. I think they did a very professional job, within those parameters of having those contradictory mandates. And therefore, I think, yes they did a good job.

I think redistricting always gives potential for confusion of voters, as polling places are changed. And there is always some concern about gerrymandering, because candidates start facing opponents they hadn’t faced previously, because they were in one district and now suddenly they have to face another incumbent.

Q: You’ve spoken out against big money in elections, but is there any way around it, really?

A: Well, yes, and we had a wonderful opportunity in Hawaii, which is still on the books, which was Act 244, which created a pilot program of public funding for elections. The U.S. Supreme Court has been chipping away, and probably will continue to chip away, at how publicly funded elections can work, but I think in the end, a way will be found to avoid the overwhelming influx of money into elections, and I think the Citizens United decision is probably going to hasten the day when we change the system, but it’s not going to happen very soon.

Q: Does what Pacific Resource Partnership’s been doing (running ads against anti-rail mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano) fall under what you’ve been talking about, or is that something separate?

A: No, that falls under what I’m talking about. They have a lot of money that they have spent on political advertising, but they are not unique at all in that. There are wealthy individuals and organizations at the national and state levels … I wouldn’t pick on them (PRP).

Q: What do you think about its ads, the behavior of that group generally?

A: I think it’s typical of what we might expect, given the current electoral laws that people are under. And it would be better for voters if there were more information, because I think voters probably want to think about who wants to influence their vote.

When I see an ad, one of my questions is, OK, why is this ad up here? Who wants to make me vote a certain way? And if you don’t know who that person or company is, you can’t even get to that  — why they want me to vote a certain way.

So I’m not sure. It’s really hard for voters to sort that out.

Q: Shouldn’t political advertising be judged on its content, as opposed to who paid for it?

A: It certainly should. I mean, I think both things are necessary.

I think it’s good to know the motivations behind someone trying to influence your vote, because that itself might be important information for you to have about whether you can believe the message.

I think fact-checking groups, which actually try to look at the truth value, the content, those are super important for voters to see, and I really encourage all the media to publish as much of that fact-checking as possible.

Q: The League is opposed to rail, right?

A: The League is opposed to the current rail plans.

Q: Why?

A: Mostly on the grounds that we did a study several years ago which showed that the potential ridership was not anywhere near adequate to justify the huge expense, and this particular plan is even more expensive because it’s elevated, unlike the plan we were looking at then. We also don’t think the route is the most sensible. Basically we think it’s too expensive. We don’t think the city, the county, can afford it.

Q: In 2008, the League issued a report regarding the status of the drug war in Hawaii and basically recommended that officials take a public health approach to the issue. Has anything come of that report legislatively?

A: No, I wouldn’t say so. It has come up at the Legislature — every year there are bills that the League testifies on to try to reduce our reliance on imprisoning people and increasing the availability of treatment and prevention. I would say Hawaii, as most states, has a long way to go.

Q: What have been some of the major achievements of the League in Hawaii through the years since it was formed here back in 1948?

A: One of the things that I think has been most useful to citizens of Hawaii is that the League, together with other people, developed the model and got the public access room at the Legislature established. … It’s where you have expert, highly informed staff, who will guide you through creating testimony, how to submit your testimony, and through all the processes. They provide workshops for the public on the legislative process so people can know how they can get their voices heard. It’s really a very effective office and its staff is wonderful.

We also have worked hard to keep gambling out of the state, and at the moment we’ve been successful — again, with other partners. That’s certainly not the League doing it at all.

Q: What’s gambling got to do with the League of Women Voters?

A: The League of Women Voters doesn’t exist solely for voter education and open government. We also have positions on various issues that we have studied. Those are adopted after careful study. The gambling position is one of those.

Q: What’s wrong with gambling?

A: There are two basic problems. One is that gambling virtually everywhere has been associated with the rise of organized crime in the states. I don’t know why this should be, … but it’s true everywhere they have gambling. Especially casino-type gambling. I’m not really thinking so much about state lotteries.

The other reason is that people probably don’t have an accurate perception of their chances of winning, so some people develop patterns of spending money there that they really could spend more constructively in their lives.

Q: Looking ahead, are there two or three goals that the League has?

A: I would say that our primary goal is to improve the functioning of democracy. That goes to making it easy for voters to vote their own issues and things that they’re interested in. Another is open and accountable government — things like the Sunshine Law, the Campaign Spending Commission. All of that goes to good government — open and accountable government.