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<br />top six voters in the Primary would go to the General. If there were six or fewer, there
<br />would only be a General Election. There would be no Primary Election. So, it's a little
<br />bit complex to understand but anyway, you have to anticipate all those things, if this
<br />should pass and if that should pass, then this is how it would work. So, in other words,
<br />if non-partisan elections were voted on and the at -large seats were voted on, we have
<br />to propose language that would accommodate that should both of those happen. As I
<br />mentioned, the Honolulu City and County went to non-partisan elections, I think, six or
<br />eight years ago. Both Maui and Kauai have voted to implement non-partisan elections,
<br />so we're the last county which still has partisan elections. Rather than go through the
<br />pros and cons, and I don't want to do this in a bias way, we do have a couple of
<br />handouts that were prepared by the League of Women Voters. One on non-partisan
<br />elections and one on arguments for and against a different electoral systems, i.e. at -
<br />large or single member districts, or a mix of whatever. So, anyway, this is a fairly
<br />independent organization which just came up with some of the pros and cons. As you'll
<br />see, a lot of the pros are cons, depending on which way you look at it, so they appear
<br />on both sides. And one other piece of background, that the City and County did a
<br />survey which showed that 76% of the cities interviewed had non-partisan elections, so
<br />this is a pretty common way to go. So, that's the non-partisan elections.
<br />The second proposed amendment is to change the County Council Districts from
<br />the present nine single member districts to six single member districts and the
<br />districts would be the same districts as the State House of Representative Districts. So
<br />we have six House Districts, so if this were to pass, you'd have six single member
<br />districts representing the House Districts and they would run for two-year terms. As
<br />proposed now, there would be three at -large seats, and they would be for four-year
<br />terms, and the basic rationale behind that is running and island -wide race, just the
<br />expense and time and commitment there, it seems to make more sense to us that they
<br />would be four-year terms. We're struggling with a number of issues related to the at -
<br />large districts, and I'll run by a couple of them with you. Number 1, when would you
<br />implement this? The soonest it could start would be 2002. If you started in 2002, two
<br />years after the election, the four at -large seats, should it pass, then those seats would
<br />not be concurrent with the Mayor's term. In other words, they'd be running off -cycle,
<br />which is, sort of, contrary to one of the reasons why a lot of people like at -large seats is
<br />that you're grooming and training people for island -wide seats, who may run for the
<br />Mayor. So it, sort of, runs contrary to that to set up a conflict in that way. One way we
<br />could deal with that is to have the first at -large term for only two years, so if people
<br />voted in at -Targe, the first time you ran it would be a two-year term, and then after that,
<br />it would go to four-year terms. Another thing we're struggling with is term limits. In
<br />1996, we voted in term limits for the County Council, four two-year terms. That started
<br />in 1996. So if this were implemented in 2002, you'd have Council people who had
<br />served six years. So one idea we've been thinking about is that we could allow a one-
<br />time exception in 1996, that irregardless of the term limits, you would allow anybody
<br />that were in the County Council then, to run for a four-year term, which would mean if
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