CHC 1979-08-14 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MR. YAMADA: This is not so unusual in that state-wide you ' ll find this all over where some districts will vote for one representative to the city council or to the house and some will vote for three or four in the state Legislatures and the other councils. It ' s not so unusual . Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Any other questions? Thank you , very much. MR. SANTOS: My name is Robert Santos and I represent the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce. My primary reason in wanting to talk to you today is the concern of the proposed ballot wording which contains these options. I find it inconceivable that anyone would find it fair that less than a majority of the votes would decide such an important matter to the County of Hawaii as the makeup or the method of electing the county council. As Mr. Schutte mentioned in his example, and to expand on that a little bit, if we do have 23, 000 votes cast--and I think that that is a most optimistic figure. . .but, let ' s suppose that we do get 23 , 000 votes and supposing that 10, 000 voters say na, we should not change, and 13,000 voters say yes, we should change. And of the two options the vote is split 7,000 and 6,000. Is it really fair that 7,000 voters will have decided how we are to elect our councilmen for the next ten years , at least? We talk about fairness in the election process , to me, this method is the most unfair proposal that I have seen suggested in all of my time. Our county has become great. One of the great nations in the world, primarily, because of its method of making decisions in which the majority rules. Please, let ' s not begin a change now where we are going to have the minority ruling. I do want to, on behalf of the Chamber, reiterate our support of the 5-2 plan. I do want to say that, like Mr. Yamada, we feel that we could live with the 5-4 plan. However, we find that there is no way that we could accept the single member district plan. First of all , the temporary arrangement is totally unsatisfactory. We cannot see where a district such as Ka 'u or Hamakua would have two councilmen during that temporary period, while Kona would have two, also, and South Hilo would have only three. Secondly, we do not feel , and we are very adamant in this position, that a single member district setup could possibly work in such a small legislative body. We strongly urge you to, first of all , give the voters a choice between the present system and a system that you feel should be an alternative. And we strongly urge you to make that alternative one of the two plans proposed, either the 5-2 or the 5-4. Thank you. -23-