Hawaii Republicans want to register 25,000 new Republican voters before the November election, hoping to expand the electorate and slowly weaken the Democratic Party’s hold on state politics.

Pat Saiki, the chairwoman of the Hawaii Republican Party, urged delegates at the party’s state convention on Saturday at the Koolau Ballrooms and Conference Center in Kaneohe to get involved in a grass-roots, precinct-level voter registration drive.

"Enough is enough, what do you think?" Saiki said of 60 years of Democratic dominance over state politics. "Enough is enough. This arrogance of power must be tempered with new ideas, new opinions, new hope.

"Our time must come. It has come. It is now."

Roughly 60 percent of voters who have participated in recent surveys for the Hawaii Poll say they usually vote for Democrats. Republicans, party leaders believe, need to grow the electorate to compete and be realistic about their count.

Miriam Hellreich, the party’s Republican National Committeewoman, said voter turnout is low in Hawaii because many people have lost hope in their ability to make a difference. Party leaders found anecdotally, for example, that many of the people who came to the state Capitol to oppose gay marriage in a special session last year were not registered to vote.

"It’s time for our voters to take a stand," Hellreich told delegates. "Republicans cannot win in Hawaii with the current pool of voters. It is critical that we register new voters who support our Republican candidates and make certain they vote.

"Voter registration is a direct path to victory in November."

The 183 delegates at the state convention heard from two of the GOP’s best-known candidates — former Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona and former U.S. Rep. Charles Djou. Both are attempting rebounds from difficult losses.

Aiona, who wants a rematch with Gov. Neil Abercrombie, whom he lost to in 2010, said voters are tired and frustrated by the political status quo in Hawaii.

Referring to the special session on gay marriage, Aiona said majority Democrats "treated due process as a quaint exercise with a foregone conclusion. If history has proven anything, it’s that absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Aiona is expected to formally announce his campaign on Monday at the state Capitol. His criticism of the political status quo is similar in theme to that expressed by former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who is running for governor under the Hawaii Independent Party banner after losing to Abercrombie in the Democratic primary in 2010.

"We can’t take more of the same," Aiona told delegates. "We can’t afford more paternalistic representatives who believe they know better than you how to run your household, your business, your checkbook and your life."

Aiona said he would return "trust, respect and balance" to the chief executive’s office. "I will earn the people’s trust not by promising new days," he said of Abercrombie’s campaign slogan, "but by doing as I say I will do."

Djou, who lost two campaigns for Congress after winning a special election in May 2010, said he was motivated for another campaign in part by "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," a book by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that details some of the political and policy calculations by the White House over the final surge of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Djou, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, was one of the soldiers deployed. "This is exactly what is wrong with government and politics today at all levels, whether it’s at Honolulu Hale, the state Capitol, or the United States Congress," he said . "Too much of politics today is based on so-called political optics.

"Trying to score quick, cheap partisan political points and not focusing on what’s really troubling average residents, average citizens in our country."

Djou said his priorities would be "jobs, jobs, jobs." He said he would again co-sponsor a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution to help address a national debt that has grown to $17 trillion.

The former congressman also said that the only thing Hawaii has seen from the federal Affordable Care Act is a dramatic increase in the cost of health insurance.

He said his core philosophy is that "government should work to make the lives of average people better, and Obamacare clearly fails that very simple and basic standard. That’s why we need to change it."

Djou favors medical malpractice liability reform, allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines, and expanding medical savings accounts so people can make their own health care decisions.