Strong beliefs by some Native Hawaiians who refuse to vote or even acknowledge U.S. authority may be contributing to Hawaii’s history of low voter turnout — a trend likely to continue with expected lackluster numbers for the Aug. 10 primary election.
“The Hawaiian kingdom is still in continuity,” said a cultural practitioner known as Kahu Mu, 61, who builds canoes, grows taro in Windward Oahu, lives off the land, does not own a computer and does not use U.S. currency.
“The history’s not written correctly,” he said. “Everything is null and void. If you’re not born and raised here, you’re a foreigner even if you’re American. Things have to be pure, and this voting stuff is not pure.”
In the August 2022 party primary election, 853,874 people registered to vote. But only 39.8% of them — or 340,159 — bothered to cast ballots despite the convenience of mail-in voting. While voter apathy in Hawaii stems from many factors, for some Native Hawaiians it comes down to distrust.
State Sen. Brenton Awa (R, Kaneohe-Laie-Mokuleia), who has no Republican primary opponent, acknowledged that some Native Hawaiians want nothing to do with the political process. Their attitudes are, “We don’t play,” Awa said.
“I come from a family that doesn’t vote,” Awa said.
Awa could face reelection for his District 23 Senate seat on Nov. 5 against former state Sen. Clayton Hee, a Democrat who also served in the House and as a trustee for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
Their district breaks down to three distinct voter demographics: Kaneohe voters who skew Asian and vote Democratic; the Haleiwa/Waialua area, which could go Democratic or Republican; and the area from Kahuku to Kaaawa, which is home to many Native Hawaiians, Tongans and Samoans — who are often faith-based and share conservative values.
“They may not be Republican,” Awa said, “but they are conservative.”
While some legislators this year will get elected with as few as 3,000 votes, voter turnout in the November 2022 election jumped in this Senate district.
Awa won his first election with 8,093 votes in 2022, beating incumbent Democrat Gil Riviere by just 405 votes.
If Hee wins his Democratic primary over Ben Shafer, the November general election will see a contrast between Native Hawaiian politicians Hee and Awa representing different eras and political leanings.
Hawaiians who don’t vote “don’t speak for me, and I’m Native Hawaiian,” Hee said. “I’m one of many Native Hawaiians in the Legislature and have represented government in all kinds of capacities.”
Hee’s parents always voted, along with people their age from other ethnic groups.
“That generation grew up treating voting as a responsibility,” Hee said. “Other ethnicities, the Japanese and the Chinese, for example, also looked at voting as a responsibility.”
Just after statehood in 1959, Hawaii voters set a general election record that will likely never be repeated when 93.6% of registered voters cast ballots.
But in the decades that followed, some Native Hawaiians became disillusioned with how government treated them, Hee said.
“The Native Hawaiian population has gradually found themselves at the lower echelons of the economic strata, and the alienation from lands has, in my opinion, caused them to take a second look at how government has responded to their needs, which may have contributed to them not participating,” Hee said.
For Hawaii as a whole, Hee sees the decision to vote or not divided along socioeconomic — not necessarily ethnic — lines.
Hee recently served on the Hawaii Paroling Authority and saw common themes among inmates’ backgrounds, including “lack of access to education, domestic violence, drug abuse, broken families — these are common threads. My experience has been when people give up on government or turn their backs on government, they don’t participate, whether running for office or simply voting.”
State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole (D, Kaneohe-Kailua) has no challenger for his District 24 seat and will win reelection outright by receiving just one vote Aug. 10.
Keohokalole chairs the Senate Native Hawaiian Caucus and co-chairs the Legislative Native Hawaiian Caucus and believes that voter participation among Native Hawaiians mirrors voter turnout among other ethnic groups.
Like Hee, Keohokalole also believes that economic status plays a bigger factor in voter participation.
In 10 years of campaigning door to door, Keohokalole said, “The biggest differential in whether someone voted or not was whether they owned their own home. Homeowners vote. In suburban neighborhoods every single home has a registered voter. In apartment buildings it’s only 1 in 3, sometimes 1 in 4. A big part of what is happening is that homeownership in Hawaii is so low it’s impacting our voter turnout.”
Asked about the absence of a challenger this year, Keohokalole said, “I attribute it to a lack of engagement. I want to say I work really hard and I do a good job. But it’s better for our community when voters have options in a democracy. Voters should have options, even if it means somebody should run against me.”
Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio, dean of the University of Hawaii’s
Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, said, “For a number of Hawaiians there is the whole question of the state’s legitimacy. Many believe the kingdom is still legally existing but still participate in elections because the reality is that the state controls virtually all of our resources.”
Other ethnic groups, particularly Asians, remained loyal voters as Democrats replaced Republicans as Hawaii’s major political force after statehood and through the 1980s, Osorio said.
“Labor was the backbone of the Democratic Party for all those decades, but their grandchildren may not be voting,” he said. “What you’re really seeing is a loss of real commitment to either the Democratic or Republican parties for different reasons.”
Osorio grew up in a family of voters. But discussing students’ voter participation at UH’s Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge can be complicated “for Hawaiians who are looking at this really, really convoluted history of how we came to be an American possession. I don’t think that it’s my job as a Hawaiian studies professor to profess participating in American elections.”
Whether they vote or don’t, Osorio said his students clearly are politically engaged and protest, demonstrate and testify on issues they care deeply about, such as military leases that are coming up across the islands and the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea.
“The students I have taught articulate their politics in very direct action,” Osorio said. “If people were astonished by the activism in the 1970s, I think they’re going to be equally astonished by the activism in the next few years.”
