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?