Hawaii continues to struggle to get people to the polls. Only 39% of registered voters turnout statewide- yikes. Yes, I know it’s not the most exciting primary election we’ve had, but you’ve got to be a part of the action.
In all honesty, this was one of those elections where Kerwin and I were only motivated to get to the polls for two reasons:
a) choosing a congressman we’ll feel good about because Zach needs a letter of recommendation for the Air Force Academy, and
b) so we’ll be automatically reregistered for the general election and don’t have to go through the hassle all over again.
That being said, the primaries have always greatly annoyed me because you have to pick just one party and “stay within just that colored box” when the array of candidates to choose from are far more colorful. I’m convinced we’d get better results if we could jump around and this partisan reasoning didn’t get in the way of our so-called “democratic process.” Far as I can see, the top 2 vote-getters should just move on to the general election.
Instead, as we exited the voting booths, another woman ended up inbetween Kerwin and I in the line to feed your completed ballot into the ballot-gobbling machine. And of course, she’d jumped colors on her ballot and the beast started beeping it’s displeasure. So we waited, and waited, and waited for the thing to recalibrate itself as the line got longer and longer. It’s one of those fact-of-life things that the wait is always the longest when you’re next in line.
But in this case I wasn’t annoyed at the woman causing the delay, I truly felt sorry for her and her blushing embarrassment. The volunteer was annoyed and grumpy (this was at 5:45pm, just before the polls are due to close at 6) and he just made her feel worse. Why do people volunteer for things they don’t really want to do? He told her she could vote again and shuffled her off to another table to wait, but with no one there to help her she just tore up her ballot and left.
You could easily see that the people waiting were thinking to themselves, “why did I even bother?”
Hope your voting experience was better. Chalk it up to entertainment, and feel good about trying to do your civic duty.