A three-judge federal panel will hear the case challenging the state reapportionment plan that excludes nonresident military and dependents beginning Friday morning, May 18, at 10 a.m. Civil Beat’s Nanea Kalani has been approved to live blog from the hearing.
For those interested, here’s a link to the state’s legal memo in opposition to the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction. It has a lengthy and detailed history that tracks the political and legal development of the current plan. Very interesting.
With the candidate filing deadline just three weeks away, there is obviously a lot of pressure on the court to quickly render a decision that allows the elections to go forward.
If the current reapportionment plan stands, there are two interesting races shaping up out on our side of the island.
Jessica Wooley, who currently represents Kaaawa and the rest of House District 47, now lives just inside the boundary of the newly redrawn District 48 and has taken out papers to run in the new district, where she will apparently face House Majority Leader Pono Chong in the August Primary Election. Former Republican Rep. Colleen Meyer, who was defeated by Wooley in 2008, has also taken out nomination papers.
Senate District 25, already in the news because of the internal flap in the Democratic Party over former Lingle cabinet member Laura Thielen to run as a Democrat, looks to be heating up even more.
In an email to friends this week, Nancie Caraway solicited campaign support for Levani Lipton, who has already filed to run in the 25th Senate District.
Here’s what Caraway, who is married to Gov. Neil Abercrombie, said about her friend, Lipton.
Raised windward, Harvard Kennedy School
Directs int’l development aid organization
Levani is the most authentic, committed, smart young leader in Hawaii today!
That is saying a lot. And she’s even more
This is her first run for public office.
Former Senator Fred Hemmings has also taken out papers to run in the district. I guess Fred found out that retirement wasn’t all that much fun. None of the three potential candidates have held a fundraiser to date, according to a check with the Campaign Spending Commission’s database.
So election districts are still subject to change, candidates are already campaigning, and everything could change depending on the court’s decision on Friday.
Sounds like exciting times ahead!
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The Keep It Kailua NIMBYs are pushing a not-by-my-definition Democrat to run in the Senate District 25 Primary which will also include the incumbent.
If the KIKers get their candidate on the ballot, that means there will be at least four (D) candidates in the Primary. The winner could take the nomination with as little as 25.1% of the vote. The KIKers believe that there are that many people in the District who will vote to support the NIMBY principles they want to enact into law.
I plan to attend the federal court hearing this Friday because I support the plaintiffs’ lawsuit. If the challenge is upheld, the current boundaries will probably stay in effect until 2014 given the shortness of time to set up the new boundary lines.
I did a comparison last year of two state senatorial districts with similar demographics with respect to age, ethnicity, education & income; however, only one of them has a major military base and a higher educational facility in it. Not counting active duty military, their dependents and college students means that one district will have more than 14,000 real human beings living there than the other district .
These people do not disappear when they are not counted. That puts a major burden on elected officials in these districts because they still have to provide services.
The United States Congress counts these folks plus prisoners when determining where the First and Second Congressional Districts boundary lines are drawn. So does the City & County of Honolulu when determining where the Council boundary lines are to be drawn.
Forty-eight other states use the same federal criteria when determining their boundary lines. The 49th state counts military dependents, prisoners & college students, but active duty military are not. According to information by one of the plaintiffs, they are expected to be counted after the 2020 Census.
Yes, we all anticipated a boundary line shift on O`ahu to the Leeward side of the island, but we did not expect to lose a Senate seat and see so many double-ups.
No matter what happens in Friday’s hearing, our household will move to a new Senate and a new House district either this year or 2014.
Democrats write off incumbent Pohai Ryan!
Has Nancy Caraway noticed how invisible Sen. Ryan was last two years. I guess she got news in the tower locked away in the mansion. While hubby reorganized cabinet full time.
Levani came to our door a couple of weeks ago. I noted that her handout said she is a D, and I remarked that hey, we already have a democrat in office in this district. “Yes,” she said, “but I’d like to have my turn.” Not sure if her walk-the-district that day included a stop next door – our neighbor on the mauka side is incumbent Sen. Pohai Ryan.
Crowded primary = Name recognition is all important = Thielen wins, Pohai second and Levani third (unless Levani has a ton of money to burn). Then Hemmings loses hard fought race to Thielen as community comes to realize “get over it Fred” you are yesterdays news.
Sen. Ryan hasn’t filed nomination papers yet but her signs/posters are all over Windward Oahu. Is that allowed? Nothing against her, but it seems strange to campaign if she’s not officially running yet.
Candidates are NOT required to file before posting signs. If you take a look at the Office of Elections website – http://hawaii.gov/elections/candidates/reports/2012/candidate_report_2012-05-10.pdf which is updated weekly -you will see that many people have pulled papers but have not yet filed.
Laura Thielen has pulled papers and posted signs all over the District, but as of this week, she has not officially filed.
Nor has Fred Hemmings – probably because the upcoming Court decision may have an impact on which District – 24 or 25 – in which he currently lives.
If posting signs bothers you, then I suggest that you find out if this is an administrative rule or statute which needs to changed – and work on it during the upcoming legislative session to change it.
The Court’s decision-making will have a significant impact on what happens. If the Ninth Circuit overturns the State Supreme Court’s decision and requires the State of Hawai`i to use the federal 2010 headcount, then there will be a major impact on over a dozen Senate and House districts across the state.
The attorney for the plaintiffs, Mark Takai, et al, filed a response to the State’s brief. It can be found here:
http://www.inversecondemnation.com/files/36.pdf
In it, the attorney, Robert Thomas, repeats an error he made in his original filing. He misinterprets the US Supreme Court precedent most relevant to the circumstances of this case, Burns v. Richardson (1966), which also dealt with a Hawaii Reapportionment case and the question of whether non-resident military should have been included.
In his brief, Thomas writes:
“In Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73, 92 (1966), the Supreme Court concluded that a state has latitude to exclude “aliens, transients, shortterm or temporary residents, or persons denied the vote for conviction of a crime” from its population basis of “registered voters,” provided the resulting plan is substantially similar to one based on population.”
That grossly mischaracterizes the decision and suggests Thomas does not grasp the core arguments in that case. And perhaps this case as well.
In Burns, the Court found that the state had used “registered voters” as the population base for computing reapportionment and that registered voters was NOT a “permissible population” for such purposes. BUT, the Court held because of Hawaii’s extremely high voter registration and turnout (at the time), it was unlikely the redistricting plan resulting from the use of registered voters varied significantly from one developed from using another , “permissible population.”
Thomas misreads the Court as saying the plan was acceptable because “the resulting plan” was “substantially similar to one based on [total] population.” No, no, no. That is NOT what the Court said. Here, from the actual ruling is why the Court upheld the plan:
“It is enough if it appears that the distribution of registered voters approximates distribution of state citizens or another permissible population base.”
The Court fully recognized, AND SUPPORTED AS VALID, the states decision to NOT use “total population” as the basis for reapportionment.
In fact, the Court approvingly quoted the lower Federal Court ruling of Judge Martin Pence:
“If total population were to be the only acceptable criterion upon which legislative representation could be based, in Hawaii, grossly absurd and disastrous results would flow.”
While I was one of the most persistent advocates to insist the Reapportionment Commission honr the State Constitution’s mandate that the plan be based upon “permanent residents” and exclude non-resident students and military, I will concede the Federal constitutional questions are unresolved. To what extent is a state obligated to provide “representation” to people present in the state for a prolonged period, even if they have explicitly and legally declared theri residence to be in another state?
In Burns v. Richardson, the Court recognized the validity of a state to limit representation to “citizens” of the state. Not “U.S. citizens present in the state, but those who qualify as “citizens of the state.” The concept of “state citizenship” is no longer as strong a concept in current thinking. And the Hawaii plan includes non-US citizens in its count of “permanent residents.” Federal legal thinking on the right to representation may have shifted since 1966. In addition, the rights of residents of a state (or community or even a nation) to control their own affairs has deeply eroded. At this point, the Federal government does not assert its overseas troops have a right to vote in Okinawan elections, for example, despite the large, semi-permanent presence of US troops stationed there. Or on bases in Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, etc.
If US troops stationed abroad are not citizens of those countries and cannot vote there (or be counted in their reapportionment plans, why should they be counted for our local elections here? What is the difference? If they are not citizens of Hawaii, despite there being NO LEGAL impediments to them becoming citizens of Hawaii–it is quite simple, why should they be included in our re-districting?
In part, this reflects the continuing integration of Hawaii into the United States. Hawaii now belongs to the US and if the Federal government stations troops here, they should be counted, even if their inclusion might lead to”grossly absurd and disastrous” distortions of the resulting plans, when judged by the standard that a vote cast in one part of the state should carry the same political weight as a vote cast in another?
All of which loops back to CWD simultaneous support for including non-resident military in the count and intense contempt for Kailua residents who want some say in the future of their community. Why the rights of community members to have such say can be dismissed as “NIMBY” rather than recognized as fundamental democratic principle shows how much some of us have surrendered to the right of the marketplace to control our society. Or, in the case of counting non-resident military, the right of US colonialism to trump local self-determination.
I also intend to attend the Friday Federal hearing. I suspect CWD and I will have to sit far apart.
On the issue of NIMBYism, neighborhood governance might need to be given greater power and authority for the sake of democracy. With the classic example of the New England town meeting, democracy is really rooted in small-scale local democracy.
That might be one of the contemporary problems with Hawaii’s political system, with it’s low levels of citizen input or interest (so different from the past). There is not enough feedback or citizen empowerment at the neighborhood level.
That might have something to do with State control of the public school system, since it might be that involvement with school issues is a primary driver that gets ordinary people interested in local and state politics. It could be that the school system should be run at the county level, but with funding provided per capita (per pupil) to the schools from the State. But that might be viable in theory, and not in practice, if the public school system has simply become a patronage machine. Any sort of patronage system would probably undermine citizen involvement, which would feed the trend toward bureaucratization and patronage, creating a vicious cycle.
Also, Honolulu County might be too big. Honolulu County, I believe, is 2.5 times bigger than all the other counties in Hawaii combined. My own notion is that everything east of the Pali Highway should form a new county, as well as everything west of the H3/H1, so that Oahu would have three counties. This is the price we pay to have true democracy.
At the neighborhood level, therefore, there might not be enough democracy and local control. But at the national level, there might too much democracy. Here I refer to the popular election of the Presidency, mediated though it may be by the Electoral College. It might be better to have something closer to a parliamentary system at the national level, where voters vote for a party, and the parties form coalitions and choose one of their leaders to be the primary national administrator (the Prime Minister).
Here is a famous op-ed piece arguing that democracy does not work, and that the technocratic Chinese model is superior.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html
This model originally developed in Singapore, where it was seen as a viable and realistic alternative for China to either “Communism” or the political and economic systems of the West. It is also the de facto system of Russia, although Russia has nominal elections. It is also the emerging system in a rapidly developing Turkey run by religious Muslims who have nominally embraced secularization, and therefore might become the future model of authoritarian development throughout the Muslim world.
The author, Eric X. Li, argues that democracy does not work, and that if the United States does work, it is because it is a republic and not a democracy. The classic examples of truer participatory democracy that he offers are ancient Greece and modern California, the latter burdened with its dysfunctional system of initiatives and referendums (that tend to cut taxes and promote spending), both of which he asserts were and are self-destructive. He might be right. But it might be better understood as a matter of scale. Democracy can and must exist at the neighborhood level as a tutorial into citizenship.
Also, the author has a very naive notion of how democracy can be applied in China. His idea is that democracy can serve a useful function as a feedback mechanism, so in the future China can and will be more democratic. But his notion of this “democracy” is of focus groups where the government will interview people on their opinions. That’s naive. It takes centuries or even thousands of years to develop institutions and cultures that educate people into citizenship.
He does seem to be correct that Americans tend to see democracy as an end in itself, almost in religious terms. That seems to be correct. It’s a kind of surrogate for religion, but even that attitude is changing, I think, as democracy has been supplanted by consumerism as an idol (and democracy has come to be a kind of consumerism itself, offering “choice” rather than citizenship).
In other words, neighborhood autonomy, with all its NIMBYism, is the price we pay for democracy. The problem is, who is even interested in democracy anymore? We’ve all turned into consumers.
Part of the problem is that on O’ahu, the City and County government are one and the same. The county isn’t necessarily too big, the City is too big.
Because of this, the barrier to entry into elective politics here are quite high. Yes, the barrier to the neighborhood boards is low, sometimes ridiculously low, but the separate elections and lack of anything more than an advisory role limits their utility as a stepping stone to other offices.
It also, IMO, puts too much power into the hands of the Mayor and C&C Council.
I’d like to try to expand on this thought-experiment of creating three counties on Oahu.
What would be the ramifications of this for Hawaii’s energy monopoly, Hawaiian Electric?
Hawaiian Electric is pushing for some big energy projects. But historically HECO has always been complacent and lethargic, and notoriously so. Even when its former head Dudley Pratt famously tried to get the monopoly to adopt alternative energy, it was to no avail.
So, as was suggested by the blog “Disappeared News” recently, HECO might be continuing with its old strategy of PRETENDING to adopt renewable energy with improbable projects when it is prompted by political forces; later, when those initiatives fall apart and the political pressure for change has dissipated (e.g., the way the Saunder’s Hall recycling program fizzled), then HECO happily goes back to its old ways of burning oil and overcharging customers who go along with it.
The undersea cable is a brilliant gambit in that light, because it’s a win-win situation for HECO. If it is built, it extends HECO’s monopoly at the taxpayers and ratepayers expense, and if it fails, then HECO can claim “Well, we tried….” and then HECO can happily go back to business as usual.
So one criticism out there has been that there is not going to be any real energy independence or shift to renewables unless the energy monopoly is broken up the way Ma Bell was. The remaining pieces of HECO would become either county agencies or be fully privatized.
In terms of creating new counties on Oahu, this might mean that on Oahu it might be better to have the remains of HECO fully privatized. On the outer islands what remains of HECO could become either county agencies or an energy cooperative, like on Kauai.
Likewise, perhaps Hawaii’s public education monopoly should be broken up. It would devolve to the county level, with equal per capita funding provided by the State.
But that is also my guess of how the federal and state governments should operate — on a strict per capita funding basis. I believe that Homeland Security spends two or three times as much per capita on rural areas than on urban areas, even though it is the latter that are primarily under threat from terrorism (I think this funding imbalance is due to patronage).
If fact, it might be more efficient to have a federal system engaged in regional devolution the way that state governments have devolved municipal services to a lower level. If you look at the federal cabinet system, there are the Secretaries; and then there are the Undersecretaries who are below the Secretaries; and subordinate to the Undersecretaries there are the regional directors.
So my idea is that in conjunction with the regional directors, there would be a kind of institutionalized feedback mechanism from the regional level. If that was in place, there would probably not been as inept a response by the federal government to Hurricane Katrina.
Devolution is good.
Fortunately, at least as a matter of professionalism if not agreement with the argument, the AG’s papers are a vast improvement over what was filed before the state Supreme Court, filings which can only be described as amateurish and, yes, downright appalling.
Ian, do you not subscribe to Dr. Caraway’s more recent, alternate spelling of her first name? Have you known her too long to accommodate that particular piece of, shall we say, eccentricity?
The Doctor is in the tower!
Senator Ryan is With Reservations.
Thielen is a Democrat, Laura that is.
Governor is getting a bite of the big apple. And
Hemmings needs money and power, at least a secretary to note his surfing accomplishments.
cwd said:
“If posting signs bothers you, then I suggest that you find out if this is an administrative rule or statute which needs to changed – and work on it during the upcoming legislative session to change it.”
???
@cwd: if you read my initial post again, i have nothing against Ryan (or anyone else for that matter). Simple question just needed a simple answer (which you stated in the first paragraph of your post, tyvm), not an analysis of my ‘assumed’ feelings on the matter, thanks.