MIN CHARTER 2019-01-25 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -7 January 25, 2019 these choices, it is going to be too difficult. Voters aren't going to understand." Well, it's no harder than choosing a pair of shoes, you know, if you got six choices right? You know what you most want, you know what you least want, so a little bit of an explanation about rank choice voting. This is what it is called now and the name under which it has been adopted. In a lot of jurisdictions in California, some in Minnesota, and Maine just adopted it wholesale for the state. So, rank choice voting wherever there are more than two candidates, so let's say four candidates, the ballot will show you all four choices and you rank them. If there are six candidates, the ballot will show you all six candidates and you rank them. Some of the benefits of it are that the spoiler effect is mitigated entirely. We have seen elections, we are all familiar with elections recently that have involved three candidates, two of one party and one of the other party, and the candidate that represented less than 40 percent of the electorate actually won the election because the party vote was split between the two where it was the same, so, okay, so, excuse me... so, the other experience that I have had besides living in Australia and voting with preferential voting is that I have worked as a precinct poll worker since 2004 and I have been in all of the positions that a precinct poll worker can have. I haven't been in counting or central control or anything like that, but all of the poll worker, precinct worker positions I have worked in. In my point of view, an amendment to our system of voting would have to pass the test of being easy for the voter to use. Now, fairvote.org, they have followed the implementation of rank choice voting in over a dozen jurisdictions for well over a decade and they have generated data and it shows that voters easily understand. Can understand rank choice voting and that voter error does not increase. Voter error does not increase, so it is not a complicated thing, and it is something that gives the voters more choice, gives every—gives all of us more choice. Wouldn't we all like to say "well, this is my—if I can't have this candidate, I want this one or this one, or this one." So, given that it has so many benefits, and it is something we can learn about, I ask you heartily to consider, give it serious consideration, and thank you again for your service. Aloha. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. If I could ask Shannon Rudolph please to come to the table. Go ahead ma'am, thank you. ROSE SCHILT: Proposal No. CA -7 in opposition and Proposal No. CA -9 in support. MS. SCHILT: Chairman Adams and members of the Charter Commission, my name is Rose Schilt, I have lived here almost 40 years, my background is that I am a retired archaeologist from Bishop Museum. I have been also, went on into Public Health and I am a retired public health worker and director of a non-profit for maternal and child and family health in Hawai`i. Most of my archaeological work was on this island and I have a deep love of the island. I represent also the Friends of Amy Greenwell, Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Page 32