Over the past several years, calls for reforming the political system in Hawaii have grown substantially.
Recent controversies from accountability over the Maui wildfire disaster to increasing transparency over the state legislative process have drawn the attention (and ire) of Hawaii voters.
It gets worse as Hawaii Democrats use their dominant political position to go after the independence of the State Auditor, after reports critical of the state government were released.
And we can’t forget key Hawaii Democratic lawmakers getting busted for brazen corruption last year.
What is driving the rot in our system? An uncompetitive political system. Our elections don’t reward voters with real choices and entrench incumbents. We should start by ending the state-run primary elections.
Primary elections only draw the most intense, usually the most partisan voters. This distorted selection process worsens the choices general election voters face.
Worse, they can be entirely unrepresentative of the parties themselves. In 2016, then candidate Donald Trump emerged from a bruising primary contest with the lowest amount of support for a GOP presidential nominee ever.
While this was going on, Republican Party leaders were functionally powerless to stop him because primary elections circumvented the party itself.
Closer to home, longtime Hawaii State Rep. Bob McDermott clinched the Hawaii GOP U.S. Senate nomination in 2022 despite less than minimal campaigning, with only 39% of the vote! How is that fair?
A typical solution advanced to address to this issue are so-called “jungle” primaries. They work where all parties compete in the same primary and the top voter getters (usually the top two or four) advance to the general election.
The argument goes that it gives a chance to reward choices more in line with voter preferences and it rewards moderate voters more.
The re-election of moderate Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2022 seems to support this, but oftentimes “jungle primaries” only reduce choices for voters. Instead of having multiple choices for U.S. Senate elections in California, only Democrats faced Democrats in both 2016 and 2018.
In 2012 and 2018, California’s 8th Congressional District notably locked out Democrats while two Republicans faced off in the general.
Numerous reforms could increase competition during general elections. Hawaii should adopt fusion voting, where political parties can cross-endorse candidates and nominees on the general election ballot. New York prominently features this system, where the minor parties (Conservative, Working Families, Independence) can influence major party candidates for office.
It can also lead to interesting and divergent political coalitions; sometimes the Conservative Party of New York cross endorses the Democrat! Voters have more choices and minor parties have more of a meaningful impact.
For federal offices (U.S. Senate, House) and state races (governor, Hawaii Senate) we should introduce run-off voting if no nominee wins an absolute majority of the vote in a first round. This happened in Hawaii in 1994 when Ben Cayetano won 36% of the vote and again in 2014 when David Ige won 49%
Internationally, France uses this system to great effect for its elections, while domestically Georgia is the most prominent.
Sometimes, ranked choice voting is offered as a solution to the majority support question, but problems exist here too. Ranked choice ballots don’t work well for encouraging competition and large numbers of candidates. Counting in a ranked choice system can be controversial, as we saw in the 2018 Maine’s 2nd District House race and the New York City mayoral race in 2021.
Multi-Member House Districts
Most radically, we should do away with single member districts for the Hawaii House of Representatives and move to a proportional representation system. Instead of having 51 single-member districts drawn across the state, we could combine them into four multi-member districts (aligned with the four counties) where the representatives are grouped together.
Right now, that would be roughly eight for Hawaii County, eight for Maui County, three for Kauai County and 32 for the City and County of Honolulu. Nominations would be handled via closed party lists where the state parties would generate a slate of candidates.
The general election voters would vote by party and not per nominee, and the top of the lists would be awarded seats based on how the percentage of the vote. Hawaii Republicans presently can get around one-quarter to one-third of the vote while only holding 11% of the seats in the Hawaii House and 8% of the Hawaii Senate. To prevent legislative fracturing, a 5% vote threshold can be instituted.
We could apply proportionality to awarding our Electoral College votes too. In 2008, the state Legislature overrode Governor Linda Lingle’s veto to tie our electoral votes to the national popular vote.
Why should the other 49 states get to determine who Hawaii voters choose to award our electoral votes for? The state Legislature should repeal this law and award our electoral votes proportionally.
Even though we’re a smaller state, we can increase our visibility and competitiveness in presidential elections.
Both parties already invest heavily to win New Hampshire (four electoral votes). Maine (four electoral votes) and Nebraska (five electoral votes) award their votes proportionally which attracts increased Republican attention to the former (winning one vote in 2016 and 2020) and increased Democratic attention to the latter (winning one vote in 2008 and 2020).
We must fundamentally change the status quo.
Uncompetitive elections lead directly to worse quality of government. We see that today in Hawaii where the structure of our elections doesn’t create a way to dislodge the dominant political actor.
Admittedly, Hawaii Democrats have in some ways simply done a better job of playing politics; it’s been 20 years since the Hawaii Republicans mounted a serious challenge to the status quo, while the third parties (Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Aloha Aina) have proven totally incompetent.
Nonetheless, structural forces are helping maintain the status quo. We must fundamentally change that status quo.
