MIN CHC 1999-08-25 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

• States in 1967 - the Land Reform Act of 1967. So, I think nonpartisan elections are healthy and I would strongly recommend that you consider them. So with those brief remarks, Mr. Chair and Members of the Commission, I stand ready, able and willing to respond to any questions. Anything that is too difficult to respond to, I'll refer to David Arakawa. RAY: Thank you. David, do you want to make any introductory remarks? ARAKAWA: Council Member Felix has to catch a plane so I'll try to keep this brief. I also am honored to be here with you, having worked with the City and County of Honolulu Charter Commission over the past little over a year, I know what type of hard work they put in and what hard work lies in front of you folks. Your dedication and your willingness to serve, I admire. I'm also sitting here next to John Henry Felix who I also respect and admire, and it's great sitting next to one of my clients who's not under fire or under investigation here, and is giving good advice to people. Too often when I sit next to one of my clients, it's trouble but anyway, this is a joy. In fact it's a good opportunity. I'II just quickly go through the nuts and bolts. I think John Henry Felix has gone through the reasons why it was done and some of the effects of it but the 1991-1992 • Charter Commission of the City and County of Honolulu put the issue of nonpartisan voting for City and County Offices, the Mayor and the Council, on the ballot. They did this and they did some research. The first thing they did is a survey of Charter issues of the 100 largest cities in the United States. So they did a survey and that survey is still available but it's dated. It's almost ten years old. Sixty-nine of the largest cities responded and the results on this particular issue - they did it on a number of issues they were looking at - on partisan vs. nonpartisan, they found that 23% of the largest cities had partisan elections and 77% of the largest cities in the United States had nonpartisan elections. The most common type of election, and now we're going to get into some of the nuts and bolts of that, was a type of election we have in Honolulu where the candidates run - however many candidates want to apply for that position, either Mayor or a Council seat, run, and to win outright, you have to have more than 50% of the vote so a good 43% of those cities that responded had a system, or type of election, where if you win 51%, 50 or more percent of the vote, you're in. The next type of election that we found out there were the two highest vote getters, no matter how much they got, the two highest vote getters run off. 30% of the City and Counties had those types of elections.