Democracy, Hawaiian style

In addition to developing a taste for kimchee this week, making banana bread with poi, and plowing through hundreds of pages of research in three different subjects, I went to the Democratic Caucus on Tuesday.

Don't know how much of this news hit the mainland (and beyond, J,) but the Hawaii Democrats were entirely underprepared for the extraordinary turnout they experienced. I'm pretty sure they were prepared for a much larger turnout than usual. Obama is from here, after all, and people love them a local boy. Cliff has further explained to me that Obama is seen to work in a very Hawaiian way -- even tempered, compromising, bridging gaps, diplomatic. And it is true that in Hawaii, if you're agressive in getting your point across (yelling or name calling), you really, really, really are making an ass out of yourself. And you might win, just because no one else wants to make an ass of themselves to go up against you... but 'it's a small island' as they say. It's best to get along, because it'll come back to you. And so Hawaiians love them some Obama.

Given this, the Dems had to know they were going to have a higher turnout than normal. However, they really underestimated just how high. In my district, the turnout was more than ten times higher than last time. We're talking a change from forty to over five hundred.

I've been trying to discern between my and Michael's perception of the mood of the ensuing chaos, and Gina's perception of the mood of the chaos. And I think it might come down to time. Gina arrived as the chaos was growing -- the point at which the volunteers were realizing 'We're not going to have enough space, we'll run out of ballots, we'll run out of voter registration forms, we don't have enough staff/volunteers to handle this crowd, WTF?!!' We arrived after the chaos was already in full swing, and planning adjustments had been made. People were patrolling the lines with precinct maps to let new voters know where to go. A guy on the loudspeaker kept saying, "We're not tied to the 7:00-7:30 voting schedule -- it's far more important that everyone get to vote." Members of the crowd who figured out what was going on started directing newcoming members to the crowd in a very pro-active, self-regulating way.

All in all, I'd say that given the confusion of the unexpected turnout, things went rather smoothly. Of course, I have a number of chaotic crowd situations under my belt. The fact that the caucus happened without any bloodied noses, fainting, or police intervention is a big success in my book.

And yes, they ran out of voter registration forms. And yes, they ran out of ballots. I would say that a majority of the ballots wound up being handwritten on scraps from yellow legal pads. Ours were. Michael and I briefly considered a scheme in which we would find a bag of ballots just outside on the street and how it would turn out that 300,000,000 people had voted for Kucinich in Hawaii, which would be enough to give him a percentage win in the Democratic Primary, given that it would come to a nearly unanimous vote by all Americans. Unfortunately, we only had my one legal pad and most of the pages already had class notes on them.

We stayed behind to find out about what happened to the ballots, who counted them, where they went, what were the checks and balances to make sure there wasn't a landslide victory due to nefarious plots by the likes of... well, us. Representative Saiki said there were no checks and balances given the turnout and how nothing happened that night in line with the way caucuses typically worked in Hawaii. He said he expected that the outcome would be challenged. I also watched as he encoding our faces -- he'll know me and Michael if/when he sees us again.

Well, the outcome was not challenged, and more to the point, I don't think it's likely that fraud could have occurred. Michael and I talked about this on the way home.

Given the fact that the districts were broken into precints, and that even in the largest precincts with the best turnout (in our district, at least) there were no more than maybe 70-100 people, and given that a precinct president was elected for each, and that that person was responsible for collecting ballots, and given that the standard seemed to be a self-elected group of precinct presidential aids to help the president with all the chaos -- it just seems unlikely that even the most savvy of sneaks could get in more than a couple extra votes, tops, which would hardly be fraud worth investigating.

Honestly, I really think that with this situation, I would put more faith in a crowd of unknowledgable first time voters than in, say, a diebold machine. I think the checks and balances here were that we were broken into small groups of people who regulated themselves. I think it's when things become huge and automated that it becomes easier for people like me and Michael to slip in an extra few hundred million votes for our candidate of choice.

But I guess it's like the 'small island' idea. There's nowhere to go to escape your sins, so it's really just best to try and get along. You don't cheat your neighbors because, come tomorrow, they'll still be there looking at you, and come tomorrow, it's better if you're still friends. So when you're writing your vote on a scrap of paper and handing it to a person in your group, who lives in your neighborhood, and who is just like you, you'll be less likely, able, and willing to try and cheat. But how likely, able, and willing would you be to fix some programming that would affect the votes of tens of thousands of people you'll never see, meet, or know? It changes things.

Give me the scraps of paper anytime. Hawaiian style, ya?