For the first time since I was eligible to vote in 1968, I almost took a pass on participating in Tuesday’s general election.

As I studied my absentee mail-in ballot, there were few competitive races or meaningful decisions to make.

Gov. David Ige and his running mate, Josh Green, are shoo-ins against the Republican team of Andria Tupola and Marissa Kerns, who have embarrassed themselves and their party by fighting each other more than the Democrats.

U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono and the two Democratic U.S. House candidates, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Rep. Ed Case, are all facing relatively little-known opponents who lack the resources to mount winning campaigns.

The same goes for my state representative, and neither my state senator nor city councilman is up this year.

The Supreme Court struck from the ballot a confusing constitutional amendment on allowing property taxes to support public education.

The only matters left to vote on were a proposed constitutional convention that has little chance against union-led opposition, a City Charter amendment to help the Honolulu rail authority find a quorum and a few contested Office of Hawaiian Affairs races.

I mailed in my ballot out of hope it still matters, but find it more difficult to fault the majority who don’t consider voting worth their time.

There’s a fix for this if we care about putting some beef on the general election menu: Adopt a “top two” primary election like California’s in which candidates for each office from all parties run in a single primary, with the top two vote-getters — no matter which parties they come from — running off in the general election.

It would force Hawaii Republicans to work smarter, encourage Democratic newcomers to challenge party incumbents and open possibilities for the smaller parties, independents and nonpartisans.

Many general election races might feature two Democrats at first, but at least the decision on who gets our highest offices would be made by well over 400,000 voters who turn out for the general election instead of barely half that many who vote in the Democratic primary.

This year under such a system, the general election ballot would have featured hotly contested races such as Ige vs. Colleen Hanabusa for governor, Green vs. Jill Tokuda for lieutenant governor and Case vs. Doug Chin for Congress.

This is much more likely to attract voters than the actual ballot described above.

And who knows, primary challengers of different philosophies might have taken on Hirono, Gabbard and unopposed state legislators if they‘d had a chance to get their ideas to the more diverse electorate in the general.

It would be a battle to sell the change to legislators who thrive in the current system, but worth the effort to re-energize local democracy.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.