HONOLULU — Isabelle Enriques — a 16-year-old, incoming junior at Mililani High School — is too young to vote but worries about Hawai‘i’s traditionally low voter turnout with the approach of the Aug. 10 party primary election and Nov. 5 presidential general election.
Mail-in ballots for the Hawai‘i primary have gone out to registered voters and should arrive in the mail this week.
Enriques grew up in a Mililani family of five older siblings and progressive-leaning parents who frequently discuss elections, political issues and their implications for the country and their family.
“My mom is Asian-Pacific Islander and my dad is half Black, half Asian,” she said. “Two of my sisters are queer.”
Then, as an incoming freshman, Enriques was inspired to become politically active herself following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade, leaving abortion rights up to individual states.
During the August 2022 primary election season, Enriques helped form the Hawai‘i chapter of High School Democrats of America and serves as president and chairperson of an organization that has since grown to 20 high school students across all island counties.
The abortion ruling lit a fire.
“It hit me very hard, along with other women in my family who were upset over Roe v. Wade being overturned,” Enriques said.
Her nonpolitical friends share common concerns including climate change, cleaning up the Red Hill fuel storage leaks, the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea and the effects of Hawaii’s economy and high housing costs, including Enriques’ personal concerns over whether she’ll ever be able to buy a home of her own.
So Enriques hopes that kids her age — and, especially, the older voting bloc just ahead of her — eventually get motivated to make their preferences known on Election Day to help drive the changes they want.
“I am concerned and I do hope those voting rates do increase in the near future,” Enriques said.
In the August 2022 Hawai‘i primary, 853,874 people registered to vote. But only 39.8 percent of them — or 340,159 — bothered to cast ballots.
This year’s primary election offers little hope for a voter turnout turnaround, with no race for governor or lieutenant governor, uncontested elections for prosecutor for Honolulu, Kaua‘i and Hawai‘i counties and little challenge to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who could win reelection outright Aug. 10 if he receives 50 percent of the O‘ahu vote plus one.
Tamara McKay, chair of the Republican Party of Hawai‘i, said there are various reasons why people in Hawai‘i register but don’t actually vote, including that “many people don’t have faith in the system or that their voices will be heard.”
“Of course we want as many people to show up at the polls as possible,” McKay said from Milwaukee while attending last week’s Republican National Convention. “We want people to participate and exercise their right to vote. It’s our duty as citizens, and we want people to have a voice.”
She placed some of the blame for Hawai‘i’s voter apathy on elected officials who don’t follow through on the concerns of their constituents.
Following a steady turnover of Hawai‘i Republican Party chairs before her, McKay said she responded to an electronic message from a Hawai‘i Island Republican who then replied, “‘Wow, you’re the first chair that’s ever responded.’ They give up because they don’t feel their voices are heard.”
The party member then sent a check to the Republican Party of Hawai‘i for $1,000 and has since “become more vocal” in Big Island politics, McKay said.
Older residents continue to represent a reliable bloc of voters in Hawai‘i, which translates into legislation on their behalf, said Marco Valera, who hopes to create a nonprofit organization focused on increasing voter turnout in Hawai‘i.
Valera worked as a legislative aide at the state Capitol where voters and advocates on behalf of AARP and Alzheimer’s care always show up wearing matching T-shirts, grabbing the attention of lawmakers who turn their concerns into action.
“If people want improvement or changes in government, the first step is voting,” Valera said. “Long-term changes come up from the grassroots level and then is made into policy.”
Valera, 37, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he twice served in the student Senate, followed by a master’s degree in urban leadership from UNLV’s School of Public Policy and Leadership.
He gets two reactions when he tells people about his background and interest in politics: They either ask his opinion on “the latest (political) headline” or quickly pivot to a different topic “like the weather because there’s a degree of apathy among many Americans, or they don’t follow politics and don’t know what to ask.”
Valera’s a member of Pacific Resource Partnership’s current class of Partners for Democracy, a civic leadership training program that includes participants from across the state.
Two of the program’s graduates — state Reps. Darius Kila, (D, Nanakuli-Maili), and Trish La Chica, (D, Waipio-Mililani) — currently serve in the House and are running in an election this year that includes all 51 House seats and 12 of 25 Senate seats.
Ian Terayama oversees Partners for Democracy and cited a 2023 Pacific Resource Partnership poll that found voter apathy in Hawai‘i was highest among 18- to 34-year-olds, 23 percent of whom were not registered to vote.
Out of those who were registered, 25 percent voted inconsistently or not at all.
Their reasons: “They didn’t like the candidates, they forgot, didn’t have enough time, they’re … ineligible to vote, not interested in politics, they don’t know enough about candidates or felt their vote didn’t make a difference,” Terayama said.
As a result, he said, “they don’t get as much attention. Campaigns see them as less valuable and don’t pursue them.”
On the opposite end, 97 percent of residents age 65 and older were registered and 63 percent voted in every primary and general election.
As a result, according to political analyst Neal Milner, this year “the youth vote will be really low in the primary. Trust in government is low. There’s no significant opposition to any of the higher level incumbents. For most people in most House and Senate districts, there’s not going to be a competitive race. The presidential election here is the only thing of moderate interest.”
There’s a danger for longer-term voter turnout because “if you haven’t voted before, you sort of develop a tradition of not voting,” Milner said.
But for younger people, he said that growing up in a home where politics is discussed and family members cast ballots “means you’re more likely to vote.”
Michael Golojuch Jr., 43, his father, Michael Golojuch Sr., and his mother, Carolyn Golojuch, are all active in Hawai‘i’s Democratic Party.
Golojuch Jr. just stepped down as chair of the party’s Stonewall Caucus after 12 years, and his father chairs the party’s House District 42, where Carolyn serves as a director.
So when friends tell Golojuch Jr. they don’t vote, “it’s like a knife through my heart,” he said. “I always vote. I’ve never missed a vote.”
Derek Turbin, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i, hopes to be surprised by voter turnout this year, especially in the presidential election.
“For young Democrats, I do think that younger generation, that teenage generation, is pretty engaged,” Turbin said. “They’re passionate about some really important issues like climate change, reproductive rights, achieving peace in the Middle East with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Locally, Turbin said, voters should expect to be visited by Democratic candidates this week as ballots arrive in the mail.
“Every Democratic candidate I’ve talked to has some sort of ground game in place, a plan in place to push out the vote once the ballots arrive,” he said. “I truly believe that voter turnout in the primary is going to be higher than some of the projections.”
As for the next generation of voters, Turbin plans to visit Hawai‘i high schools and talk to students starting in the fall “and do what I can to get them excited about voting and how important it is.”
It’s a message that Enriques embraces as leader of the Hawai‘i chapter of High School Democrats of America.
She wants to study political science at the University of Hawai‘i but because of Hawai‘i’s high cost of living might end up attending college on the mainland, even with the expense of out-of-state tuition.
Whatever happens, Enriques already has plans to run for Hawai‘i’s state Legislature one day.
It was all born out of outrage over a Supreme Court ruling, followed by a request from a fellow student to help mobilize high school students like herself to get politically involved.
“I didn’t think twice about it,” Enriques said. “I said, ‘Yes I’ll do it.’”
