When we hold an election, who shows up?
Honolulu pollster Rebecca Ward, president of Ward Research, recently asked Hawaii residents if they had the chance to vote in the November election.
The question was part of a poll taken Nov. 15-24 of 412 people called across the state. The survey has a margin of error of 4.8 percent and half the telephone calls were made to landlines and half to cell phones.
Ward shared her data and it makes for an interesting view on who votes.
First it confirmed what other surveys have shown: The older and richer you are, the more likely you are to be a voter in a Hawaii election.
Elections do not equally attract all voters or even all those eligible to vote, so who votes and who is likely to vote makes for interesting speculation.
Just 4 percent of those who voted were between the ages of 18 and 24. But of those who said they voted in the 2012 election, 28 percent were 65 or older.
Perhaps the most disturbing age split was that of those who did not vote: 55 percent were 34 or younger.
This is a huge self-selected disenfranchisement.
Compare that with those who did vote.
The median age of those who voted was 53, and the median age of those who did not vote was 31.
From an ethnic viewpoint, of those who voted, 27 percent were Caucasian and 24 percent were Japanese. For those who did not vote, the largest groups were Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian, at 28 percent.
There was also a glaring difference in the household income between voters and nonvoters.
The median household income for those who voted was $66,400, and for those who either did not vote or did not register to vote, the average was $44,700.
The poll did not ask political affiliation, but from the numbers, it appears the name of the dominant political party is "Old and Wealthy."
Ward’s sample also measured the differences between those who voted on Election Day and those who voted absentee. She found that it was roughly the same, with differences between those voting early and those voting absentee to be well within the margin of error.
"It appears that absentee voting has become so commonplace that there is no measureable difference," Ward said.
The results may be reassuring to the AARP, which already knows that its members vote and is equally confident in using its political muscle.
And if we have a congressional delegation with only one member under 61 and a 74-year-old governor, a median voting age of 53 may be understandable.
According to the U.S. Census, there has been a drop in youth voting and an increase in voting by the seniors. Nationally, of those 20 and under, about 48 percent voted in 1972, falling to 41 percent in 2008. Those 65-plus had voting rates above 60 percent throughout the years.
There was a time in Hawaii when the elections were the responsibility of the lieutenant governor — and while no one ever made voter turnout an issue in a lieutenant governor’s election, no candidate wanted to be tarred with fumbling an election.
Lieutenant governors made sure they had enough money to run a public campaign to get out the vote. Drive-through voter registration campaigners were staged at the state Capitol. Contests were held for school kids to come up with the best voter slogans, and there were special voter programs targeted for specific groups, such as renters.
Today the elections are run by a chief elections officer who is answerable to an appointed, nonpartisan commission.
The law says only that "The chief election officer shall be responsible for public education with respect to voter registration and information."
It is time to give the elections officer both a budget and goals for an increased voter turnout and also a more reasonable balance between the voters.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
