The buzz in Hawaii’s Nov. 5 general election will come from the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Though Hawaii isn’t among the half-dozen swing states that will determine the outcome, voters have strong opinions about the candidates to motivate them to register.
In local contests, however, most of this year’s few seriously contested races were decided in the August primary, leaving general election ballots barren in many districts.
The primary had a miserable 32.3% turnout because of light candidate choices. We can’t keep having so few voters decide who will govern us from such a short list.
Election reforms such as legislative term limits and public financing could draw more candidates, and thus more voters, while blunting special-interest influence.
As urgently, we need to make the general election, with its bigger turnout of more diverse voters, the main event instead of a lame afterthought.
Many legislative races were settled this year in the Democratic primary because other parties fielded no candidates.
At the city, Mayor Rick Blangiardi and top vote- getters in contested City Council races were elected outright in the primary because they got more than 50% of the vote, leaving no city elections to be decided in the general for the first time.
In 2020, the previous presidential election year, the primary drew 407,190 voters, compared with 579,784 in the general election. Assuming this year’s paltry 271,345 primary voters see a similar jump, those extra 170,000 or more voters will have no say in the legislative races and city elections that were settled in the primary.
One way to return the general election to its intended status as the main event is to end the city’s rule in which a candidate who draws more than 50% of the primary vote wins the office outright. Make the leader run off against the next-highest vote- getter in the general no matter the winning primary percentage.
In the Windward Council race, incumbent Esther Kia‘aina won outright with 12,197 votes over a total of 8,750 by her three opponents. There were 4,720 blank ballots, which would have put Kia‘aina below 50% if counted.
If David Kauahikaua, the second-place finisher at 3,753, could have drawn the majority from other losing candidates, turned blank ballots his way and scored with new voters coming into the general, it was conceivably enough of a race to put before voters.
Another key to restoring the general election as the main event is adopting “top two” primaries like California and Louisiana, where candidates from all parties and independents run in a single primary, with the two top finishers — no matter their parties — running off in the general.
It would force Hawaii Republicans to fix their dysfunction if they want to compete, encourage Democrats of different ideologies to challenge party incumbents and open possibilities for smaller parties and independents — all working to give more choices to a bigger general election electorate.
This year’s landmark race where Kim Coco Iwamoto narrowly upset House Speaker Scott Saiki would have been run in the general election instead of the Democratic primary, with potentially twice as many voters weighing in on such a momentous decision.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
