..a new elementary school, so a new location... no signs guiding the way and even google maps was a little confused... (or maybe it was me..) We got there around 2pm... the parking lot was full but that was because there was a gymnastics event going on at the same time...
There were about 30 people in the room.. the Bernie rep was very nice and everyone was quite friendly... Registration was quick and easy with our ID's, and I think we're on the voter registration rolls... they were in the process of beginning to shut down, but still accomodated anyone who showed up...
One thing that surprised me was the number of Republicans that were in attendance.. the girl who was greeting everyone, guiding us to the registration desk ran as an R against an incumbent D here a couple of years ago, and two of the three refreshment stations were manned by R's running for our "non-partisan" County Council race... ugh..! Trolling for votes wherever they can get em, I guess.
All I can suggest for the debacle that occurred was that the organizers should have set a definite end time. We all knew the polls would open at 1pm.. no one knew when the polls would close. Because the organizers said they were working on a limited budget and all volunteer staff, I think they should have scheduled a 4 hour time frame with a definite closing time, say 4pm. Not perfect, but it would have worked...
Re: closed primary... I think that it's a good thing... I may change my mind in the future, but I see great potential for Bernie's revolution in the closed primary process. You have to join the Party to vote and in joining the Party, we have the potential to change the way things are.
I think it has become very apparent that here in Hawaii many of our politicians are corporatists.. completely in the pocket of the big corporations. What happened with HB2501 today, the GMO scam, HECO and on and on, things need to change. And I'm hopeful that they can.
I'm pretty sure that there's a whole bunch of new Party members (like us) who, if informed and motivated can change the Party from within. I hope that we can get some type of organization mechanism off the ground to inspire all the new members to the Party to stick with it and affect change. This is where I believe Bernie's revolution starts.. the roots, if you will.
And while I'm on a roll with this post, let me also say that we are big fans of absentee voting. I think absentee voting should be made more accessible. I find having the ballot in hand three weeks out gives us the ability to research all the candidates and most importantly to research all the amendments and charter provisions that they add to the ballot. This IMO, is very, very important.
Damn... this is probably the longest post I've posted on DU in the over 12 years that I've been here.
Mahalo, Mahina for all you do...!!!
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