David Shapiro: Voting is easier than ever, yet democracy fights to live on

My first election night was 1964 in Hilo, featuring the race for county chairman between Democrat Shunichi Kimura and Republican Elroy Osorio, relative upstarts who would both go on to distinguished careers.

I was still in high school and politically clueless, but my friend Leon Siu, now a prominent Hawaiian nationalist, got us $10 jobs as poll watchers for Osorio.

I was fascinated by the excitement at the old election headquarters on Waia­nue­nue Avenue, awaiting hand-tallied results from outer districts until Kimura was declared winner late in the night.

By 1968 I was an intern for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and counting was done in the shiny new County Building. Kimura was elected the island’s first mayor under the new County Charter in the first election in which I could vote.

In 1970 I was a junior reporter fetching for Star-Bulletin political aces Tom Coffman and Buck Donham in the historic Democratic gubernatorial showdown between John Burns and Thomas Gill.

I’ll never forget Burns’ late-night appearance at the media center in the Capitol basement, puffing a cigar nearly as big as him, after handily winning reelection in a bitter battle many of the assembled press expected he would lose.

Campaigns then consisted mostly of big rallies involving food and entertainment along with the speeches. They were reported on by two newspapers of wide circulation that assigned teams of reporters to produce daily stories on each major race.

Reporters got information from candidates, voters at the rallies and trusted sources in the trenches, not polls and academics. The polls and pervasive TV advertising were just catching on. Sign-waving wasn’t a thing yet. The internet hadn’t begun ravaging traditional news.

I’ve seen elections morph from celebrations of democracy in which most gladly took part and felt good about the process, to today’s extremes of vicious blood sport and numbing apathy that leave just about everybody frustrated except the special interests that pay to get their way.

There’s no election night excitement. We vote by mail instead gathering with neighbors at polling places and get results the instant polls close. We’re peeved if we have to wait a couple of hours for a second printout to settle a close race.

I’ve had a 58-year, front-row seat to the battering of our healthy democracy, but I struggle to explain the whys and hows with any certainty or point a clear way forward. Maybe I’ve lived too close to the trees to see the forest. Perhaps the forest is afire and we can’t see through the smoke.

When I see the poor choices on my ballot, or nonchoices in uncontested races, I wonder why I bother. But I mail it off in the gut belief that the only way to save democracy is more voting, not less.

As a reader whose insights I value put it, “Win some, lose some, but … I think it important to stand up, be counted and defend a system that, although imperfect, has served us all nearly as well as could be hoped.”

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.