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Editor’s note: Hawaii voters just can’t seem to get excited about elections. Voter turnout is generally among the lowest in the nation. Incumbents almost always win. And this year saw a marked drop-off in the number of people who are even running for office. That’s prompted our “Let The Sunshine In” writers to begin exploring ideas that could encourage people to participate in the democratic process rather than being turned off by it. We welcome your suggestions and a robust discussion in the comments section as we go along.

Let’s say that you live on Maui in House District 12, which includes Pukalani, Makawao, Kula and Ulupalakua, and you’re wondering who to vote for in the Aug. 10 Hawaii primary.

Incumbent Kyle Yamashita is running for reelection, but you are tired of voting Democrat. Throw the bums out, you are thinking.

Fortunately, Rita Ryan, a Green candidate, is also in the race, so you’ll vote for her in the primary. A fresh face!

You also live in the 2nd Congressional District, and you’re tired of U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, too, even though she’s only served one term and you’re not even sure what she looks like. You favor instead Libertarian Aaron Toman. Let’s try somebody new!

In the race for U.S. Senate, meantime, you’re very weary of seeing Democrat incumbent Mazie Hirono on the ballot once again. She’s held public office nearly every year since the end of the Carter administration!

So you do a Google search to learn more about the six Republicans in the Senate race plus a nonpartisan, a Green and a We The People candidate. There’s even two Democratic challengers — how novel!

(Yes, there actually is a We The People party. That’s fodder for a future column, one on the purpose of political parties.)

After completing your ballot and popping it in the mail, you feel satisfaction that the 2024 Hawaii primary election offers such a variety of candidates with such different positions to choose from. All hail democracy!

And that’s when you wake up from your dream and remember that Hawaii does not actually let voters choose freely among the primary candidates. Instead, they must pick a political party at each primary and vote only for that party’s candidates.

It’s been that way for decades, and it doesn’t seem the least bit democratic (note the lowercase “D”). I have written about it several times over the years, as recently as 2020, and it’s even been challenged in court, all to no avail.

But I believe it helps ensure that the Democratic Party of Hawaii remains the dominant party. Shouldn’t there be more choices for primary voters?

Primary Confusion

The laws governing state primaries are “complex and nuanced” and have caused confusion for both voters and election administrators, according to a recent report.

The National Conference of State Legislatures as , , , , and .

Hawaii is considered by NCSL to have an “open” primary along with 14 other states, meaning they don’t ask voters to choose a party affiliation when they initially register to vote.

“In an open primary, voters choose which party’s ballot to vote, but this decision is private and does not register the voter with the party,” according to the February report. “This permits a voter to cast a vote across party lines in a primary election.”

But Hawaii’s primary is not fully “open,” because voters have to choose one party’s races only — they can’t glide between them as they move down the ballot.

By law voters here party affiliation. But if they try voting in the races of more than one party, the state Office of Elections rejects the votes for those particular contests, although it does count in the overall turnout as well as for races that are nonpartisan.

Flawed ballots are called “over” votes and they are not a rare occurrence and suggest some voters would like more options. In the 2022 Hawaii primary, for instance, nearly 1,000 voters picked multiple parties, even though the ballot says clearly that you should not do that.

The 2022 results illustrate just how successful Democrats are in Hawaii and bolster the argument that the primary seems almost to favor them.

More than 245,000 voters checked the ballot box for the Democratic Party compared to just under 74,000 who went Republican. Fewer than 4,000 combined picked the Green, Libertarian, Constitution or Aloha Aina parties.

I understand that a primary is part of a two-party system. But it increasingly seems an antiquated way to pick our leaders, especially as party principles are far more fluid these days and more and more voters consider themselves neither Republican nor Democrat but independent (note the lowercase “I”).

And all the county and Office of Hawaiian Affairs races are nonpartisan (technically, they are called “nonpartisan special”), which is roughly one-fifth of all primary contests. You can vote for who you want in those races, no holds barred.

We also don’t vote in primaries the same way we vote in general elections, where we can vote for whomever we want, as long as we only vote for one candidate per contest — the exception being the Kauai County Council, which allows voters to select up to seven candidates, and some at-large trustee races for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

I suppose we could more accurately call our primary system “one party only,” but that suggests there is only one party physically on the ballot when they’re all there, tantalizingly.

How Did We Get Here?

Civil Beat contributor Ian Lind reports that Hawaii used to have a closed primary system where voters had to publicly state a party preference when registering to vote, although that choice could be changed later.

“But the requirement to disclose political party preference was widely seen as a deterrent to voting and an invasion of privacy,” he wrote. “Some voters were said to feel intimidated and vulnerable to outside pressure by the need to publicly declare their choice of party.”

In the 1978 Constitutional Convention, Lind explains, delegates believed that an open primary would protect privacy and encourage participation in elections. The first open … I’m sorry, “open” primary … was held in 1980.

Hawaii Democrats in June 2013 filed a legal challenge to the state’s primary system but not to make it more open. The lawsuit, according to Lind, argued that the “open primary” system was unconstitutional because it infringed “on the exclusive right of the party and its members to decide who should be eligible to nominate the county, state and federal candidates who will represent the Democrats in general elections.”

The lawsuit was generated because Hawaii Democrats had approved a resolution at their state convention the month before “to ensure Democrats are elected at the primary stage by their fellow Democrats.”

That prompted David Chang, the chair of the Hawaii Republican Party, to say that Dems had a constitutional right to choose a closed primary system. Nonetheless, he said, the GOP would stick with the “open” primary.

“The Democrats seek to limit who may participate in selection of their candidates to protect the interests of their party bosses, machine politics and their far left base,” Chang said.

That November, a federal judge ruled that the “open” primary system was constitutional. U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright determined there was no “severe burden” placed on Democrats’ right to free association.

At the time, Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature, the governor’s office and all four of Hawaii’s seats in Congress. They still do.

Still, the party quickly appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But it lost there, too.

The only way to change Hawaii’s primary system is through a constitutional amendment. In 2019, then-Rep. Sylvia Luke that would allow voters to vote for any primary election candidate no matter the party.

It died quickly. But I suspect that the issue of an “open” primary is not going away.