Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 15:01:33 -1000 From: Mia H H Lam Subject: LOCAL NEWS SEP 15 (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:42:33 -1000 From: Tom Ramsey To: ramsey-list@math.hawaii.edu Subject: LOCAL NEWS SEP 15 THE SEPTEMBER OHA NEWSLETTER, PAGE 13 Rowena Akana opposes ConCon Headline: "Con-Con rears its ugly head" Author: Rowena Akana, Trustee At-Large Aue! [macron over e] Just three months ago, believing that at least we were safe for the time being, I sighed with relief and asked all of you to be gratefule that our supreme court had killed the constitutional convention. I also warned that the Con-Con question could be put to the voters again in 1998. As it turns out, our security has proved even more short-lived than I had imagined. On July 11, [ramsey note: federal] Judge David Ezra ordered a new vote on whether Hawai'i should have a constitutional convention. As much as I dread the expense to the taxpayer and the possibility of a vote in favor of a Con-Con, I understand the judge's logic. Just so we are all on the same page, let's review the sequence of events that led to this state of affairs. When we went to the polls last November, we cast 163,869 votes saying "yes" to the constitutional convention, 160,153 saying "no" and 45,245 blank ballots. For months the fate of the Con-Con hung on the effect of the blanks. Should they be counted as for or against? While our supreme court was deliberating these issues, our legislature was acting as if a Con-Con was a done deal. Against all recommendations from concerned citizens, our legislators began to set things up for each representative district to have one Con-Con delegate, thereby guaranteeing themselves summer jobs in 1998. [ramsey note: this timetable was from the House leadership, especially Joe Souki; the Senate did not want a Con-Con in 1998]. But they had to stop these shenanigans in mid-session because the supreme court decided, according to established precedent and our Hawaii Constitution, that the votes had to be interpreted as against a constitutional convention. However, when Judge Ezra got the case, he decided that the issue was not Con-Con yes or no but whether the election had been fairly conducted since we voters had never been told how a blank vote would be counted. [ramsey note: this is arguable; e.g., the League of Women Voters on Kauai ran ads for a week prior to the election, saying that blank votes counted as "no".] So the election had to be held all over again [according to Judge Ezra]. Although experts are predicting further appeals will drag on and on [ramsey note: yes, indeed, we hope!], Dwayne Yoshina [state elections official] is gearing up to bring us back to the polls for a special election---at a cost of $2.1 million, nearly $2 million more than if the question were put on the 1998 general election ballots. According to Yoshina, the vote will be held on Dec. 2, a date I urge all of you to circle on your calendar [ramsey note: that has now been postponed]. We Hawaiians need to turn out massively that day and rejct a constitutional convention once and for all. Our protections and benefits are being targeted by politicians who would like to see them disappear with a stroke of a pen. In particular, they would like to wipe out the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and our native gathering rights, both now guaranteed under our present constitution. We need to stand together and make sure that they never get the chance to take these guarantees away from us by redrafting a new constitution to suit themselves. Plenty of voters do not want a constitutional convention any more than we do. They object to the cost and to rewriting from scratch every few years the framework of our state government and the source of our most basic rights and protections. I wish we did not have to deal with this, but we must not consider Judge Ezra's ruling a total defeat for our people. Rather it is an opportunity---to show our Hawaiian clout by saying "No!" to a constitutional convention. For more information regarding the state Con-Con please feel free to contact my office at 594-1838. --end of article ---last of 4 articles from OHA Tom Ramsey