This year, the state will make its maximal invitation to its adult citizens to exercise their right to vote, making it easier than ever for them to perform that civic duty on Primary Election Day, Aug. 11.
Further, and even more importantly, there is more evidence than ever that an individual vote can make a real difference in outcomes, with some fluidity in voter preferences evident.
As for the robustness of the voting mechanism, certainly there could be glitches that add hurdles here and there — and things have gone wrong in the past. This year, there has been an effort to head off the barriers to ballot access: The lava flow on Hawaii island has forced a workaround, for example.
But short of escorting voters to the polls or putting the ballot right in their hand, there’s really nothing more that the lawmakers could do to make things more convenient.
This year, there are the established early-voting opportunities: Voters can check out their options online at elections.hawaii.gov/voters/early-voting Opens in a new tab. Those who have requested a mail-in ballot should be getting them (the deadline to request one for the primary is Aug. 4). Walk-in voting at a total of 10 locations statewide will happen July 30-Aug. 9.
But now, even for those who have not yet registered, there will be no excuse for taking a pass. This is the first year voter registration is possible the same day as you cast a ballot at a polling place.
Finally, there are real choices to make in multiple key races, particularly on the Democratic Party slate. And if polling is to be believed, there is still ample room for voters to change their minds, which means a real horse race is heating up.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the top-of-the-ticket contest between Gov. David Ige and his principal challenger, U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa.
The Hawaii Poll, conducted for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, was showing Hanabusa with a wide lead only four months ago. But in the follow-up conducted earlier this month, results published in Sunday’s Star-Advertiser, that advantage had all but evaporated.
There’s been some pushback from Hanabusa’s campaign, not surprisingly, asserting that its in-house polling shows a different result more to her liking. Individual political polls can range widely, as they are just snapshots of a sampling of the voting population.
But the point is that opinions shift, and that there is still a relatively large share of the electorate that is undecided: 15 percent in March and 16 percent in July.
Similarly, on the GOP side of the election, there’s been another reversal: State Rep. Andria Tupola has taken a sizable lead over former state Sen. John Carroll. The undecided vote has shrunk from 32 percent to 23 percent, but that’s still a significant number sitting on the fence.
What this should communicate to candidates is that voters could use a nudge, in the form of specific policy ideas they propose to pursue, if elected. It is quickly reaching the point when broad goals — support education, address the homelessness crisis, improve economic conditions — must be fleshed out.
As for the voters, they now have a responsibility to get engaged in the process. They should attend a candidate forum, if that’s possible, hear the hopefuls defend their platforms in a published or broadcast setting or otherwise seek out the differences in the issues that matter most to them.
Hawaii has had a miserably low voter turnout record for years. In the 2016 election, Hawaii again achieved the dubious distinction of the country’s lowest percentage at the polls — 43 percent.
That simply can’t be accepted as the norm. The state government has done its bit to lay down the red carpet for voters, but they still will have to walk the walk.
