The League of Women Voters in Hawai’i and other states wants less corporate
money and more public funds in election campaigns to make them a more
of-the-people, for-the-people process. Still to be worked out is where the
public underwriting would come from, and whether taxpayers would feel the pinch
– and whether they’d feel they’re getting their money’s worth.
Which leads
to this: All in all, a reduction of big-money influence in elections is an idea
worth considering, though it’s been discussed for a long time and is making
marginal headway nationally. But there are other problems with the political
process that also need attention, and for which reform of campaign spending
practices can’t solve all by itself. And we’re not talking about Florida’s
ballot brouhaha.
Low voter turnouts nationwide is perhaps the biggest
bugaboo. A close second is the shortage of truly outstanding candidates at all
levels of public office – national, state and local.
According to results
of a Newsweek magazine poll announced this week, Hawai’i ranked third from the
bottom among the 50 states in percentage of voting-age population that cast
ballots in this year’s elections. Here again, this is nothing new. But doggone
it, what does it take to get voters to pay attention to and participate in
elections? Is it their cynicism toward politics and/or government? And if so,
have voters been turned off for good and beyond the point of no return? Are the
mediums for distributing campaign and candidate information – news coverage,
paid advertising, town hall meetings and forums – ineffective or a victim of
voter apathy? Or are candidates not talking about issues that people care
enough about to sit up and listen?
The last question funnels partially
into the next one: How can the best and the brightest of people – the ones who
know how to reach voters, can truly stimulate interest in the body politic and
are problem-solvers of the highest order – be drawn into public life? People
who are filling the bill now deserve credit for trying, but some frankly have
no business being elected officeholders, except for the fact nobody better
stood up to be counted. Are the superior candidates found only in pipe dreams
too afraid of the public skewering that goes with vote-seeking, too skeptical
of government’s overall effectiveness, too complacent or too busy with making a
life for themselves and their families to get involved?
These are all
issues that are easy to talk about but hard to resolve. Each deserves equal
attention, however, because they are important on the same levels and are all
connected. Finding a solution – not a panacea, but a real cure – for one can
make the others easier to straighten out.
