3 Reasons Your Vote Doesn’t Matter in Hawaii

1.  2008 Pick-A-Party Change

Hawaii has traditionally had open primaries, which allow any individual to choose one candidate per election during the primary.  This year, however, voters had to choose a political party before voting in the primary [1].  The official reasoning behind this is that it would prevent more ballots from being thrown out.  The generally understood reasoning is that it would prevent individuals from purposefully choosing a less than popular candidate in the opposing party.  How does that hinder someone’s right to vote?  Think of Joe-Shmo Republican or Independent living in X district on Oahu.  X District is a primarily Democrat district, which means it always has a Democrat City Council Rep, State House Rep and Congressional Rep.  Odds are his vote in the general election for his Republican/Independent candidate will never make an actual impact.  If there was an open primary, at least he’d be able to have an influence on which Democrat represents him, but now he doesn’t even have that vote.  This is the situation for almost every Republican and Independent in Hawaii, they have no real vote.

2. Unions

Unions are private organizations, and Hawaii has the least amount of restrictions on their formation and operation out of any state in the union (no pun intended).  This may seem like a good thing, unless you are a member of a Union and don’t agree with them politically.  Unions will openly tell their members who to vote for, pressure their members who to contribute to and even make bulk contributions to candidates out of Union dues while separating them into individual member donations to get around campaign finance restrictions.  This wouldn’t be so bad if the Hawaii State Constitution [2] didn’t openly endorse and require involvement with specific Unions.  Think your Union is unfair, want to start a new one?  Too bad, your Union is written into the State constitution.

3. Honolulu Can’t Petition on Taxes

That is right, Honolulu is the only municipality in the entire country that does not allow its citizens to petition to have a change in a tax regulation added to a general election ballot.  Remember how one of the catalysts that caused our country to be formed was “No Taxation Without Representation”?  Where is the outrage about the fact that citizens literally have no power to protect themselves from unfair taxes?

Private-Public Partnership… The Wrong Way

Its old news really. Taxpayers pay money, elected officials take that money and use it to fund projects that their friends or their supporters will benefit from. It happens so often it is sadly considered business as usual. In Hawaii, on the other hand, it happens on a whole different level. Lets take a look at two key industries in Hawaii and see how cronyism is currently in place:

Tourism

Like it or not, Tourism is the meat and potatoes here in Hawaii. I, like many, agree that it shouldn’t be the only industry, however there is no reason why it shouldn’t remain a strong source of income. Lets take a quick look at the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

“The Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) was established in 1998 through Act 156 as the lead agency and advocate for Hawaii’s tourism industry, responsible for creating a vision and overseeing tourism from a statewide perspective. This same act also established the Tourism Special Fund – a set percentage of the transient accommodations tax (TAT) collections that is assessed on hotels, vacation rentals and other accommodations. This fund is the revenue source that HTA draws from, for developing, implementing and supporting its tourism programs and other efforts throughout the State.” - [1].

Hawai‘i Tourism Asia, Hawai‘i Tourism China, Hawai‘i Tourism Korea, and Hawai‘i Tourism Taiwan are all managed by AVIAREPS Marketing Garden Ltd. [2]. This means that your taxpayer money goes to this company to propagate the interests on Hawaii Tourism to the Asian Market. Among many things, AVIAREPS also provides Public Relations, Advertising, Call Centre, and Web Development services [3]. So when a Hotel or Retailer goes to the government agency by the name of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, and seeks advise on who to go to for PR, Advertising and Web Development in Asia….. I wonder who is recommended? When government agencies need PR, Advertising or Web Development in Asia I wonder who gets the contract? How can we trust that our taxpayer money is paying for the best Asian Market Analysis when all the services that are being analyzed have no competition?

Energy

Did you know that Hawaii has the highest percentage of electricity generated by fossil fuel at 90% [4]? Did you know that Hawaiian Electric has a government sanctioned monopoly on the island of Oahu? Most of all, did you know that the profits from Hawaiian Electric go to unrestricted investments in other businesses such as American Savings Bank [5]? Here is how it works:

Hawaiian Electric has a government sanctioned monopoly, so a certain percentage of their profits has to be reinvested into research and infrastructure to make their service better. However, all the profits made by the other company owned by the group (American Savings Bank) are not capped. So HECO takes all the money made from electricity and invests it into ASB, and at the end of the year it doesn’t show up as HECO profit. Meanwhile, ASB has no cap on its profits, and everyone’s wallets get bigger. All the while, HECO is still dependent on fossil fuel, which has a volatile price, and every time gas goes up HECO requests permission to raise its rates and we get screwed. No money is going into research, no money is going into new infrastructure, we will never see the potential of all the untapped natural resources because HECO makes too much money off of burning fossil fuel. Who can fix this, our elected representatives. Why don’t they? Think about it…. in the mean time here is what a good elected official would do.

Hey HECO, you can’t raise rates again, ever. What you can do is invest into new infrastructure and alternative energy resources. For every dollar you invest into this, we will give you double that in tax credit. It is now your responsibility to make sure the energy you provide is generated affordable enough to keep your company afloat without raising rates at a higher rate than inflation.

In conclusion, lets kick out the City Council, kick out the Mayor, Kick out the State Senate and Kick out our Congressman… lets replace them with people. Normal people with normal jobs with normal problems. People who will look at the annual salary one of those positions offers as a decent living, or even a pay raise.