The company solved this problem for me by staging a voter registration drive a few days before the deadline, so all I had to do was go to the lobby, fill out the form, and they did the rest. Despite the common “wizdumb” about this company, it is actually very community conscious.

Yesterday, Saturday September, 20, 2008 as of this script, was the day to vote and like most people I put it off until the last minute and wasted precious minutes of my weekend to vote when I probably could have done so by absentee ballot. As you will see this probably would have been the better course, but I like going physically to vote, it makes me feel more like a true American somehow. But that is just me I guess.

I knew that my voter registration was properly filed because I saw the card in the mail informing of this fact, and where to go to vote, on the kitchen table. But somewhere along the line it got lost, thrown out by accident probably.

No problem, I thought, I’ll just look it up on the internet. This proved a little more difficult than expected but eventually I found the link on the Honolulu.gov website. Address is 324 Kapahulu Ave. No problem I live just blocks from there and only a fool could miss the huge school across from the Honolulu Zoo. Piece of cake. Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men.

I walked the 4 blocks or so to the school and entered one of the few gaps in the fence and started walking the grounds looking for the cars and the commotion that would surround a voting place. Nothing.

I wandered around the campus. No people, no cars, just nothing. Eventually I ended up at Kuhio Ave on the other side of the campus from where I entered only to find there is no way out. By this time I was getting severely frustrated.

At one corner of this fence is a low spot where school officials have pounded pipes into the ground and put wire to prevent students from escaping their fate. This is where I figured it was my best bet to escape my fate of being trapped here forever or walking all the back across the campus to the Ala Wai to leave the way I came.

So I very carefully climb up on this mess of pipes and wires and very carefully figure how I am going to climb down. I have to take extreme care because I have the world’s worst sense of balance (I have crashed every bicycle I have ever owned and have the scars to prove it, which is why I, personally, don’t think much of biking as a way to solve our commuting problems – nobody wants to see me coming at them on a bike – but I digress).

As I am climbing over this obstruction my glasses slip off my nose and fall exactly where I planned to land. So I carefully plan my leap to the ground and manage to not crush my glasses in the process. Whew!

Figuring I goofed somehow I walk to the front of the school, to 324 Kapahulu Ave, to get to the voting booths. Nothing. All the gates are locked and there is no sign, not a single thing to indicate that this is the place where one should go to vote.

At this point I have resigned myself to walking home and looking up on the Internet yet again where I am supposed to go. As I was doing this I noticed the Waikiki Library on the way. Of course, they will know.

I go to the info desk and the lady looks it up for me on the Internet and says yes it is the right address. And then she pulls out a map and shows me that the polling place is on the very, very back corner of the campus in the cafeteria. (Yes, I know writing ‘very, very’ is bad grammar but I am trying to make a point here.)

While she is telling me this I notice that my hands are all bloody. I ask her, is there blood on my face? She says no, it is from your arm. I look down and there is blood running down my left forearm from when I got scratched jumping down from the fence. Being so concerned about not crushing my glasses I never even noticed scratching my arm.

She offered me a bandage, (the personnel there are always very helpful and nice) but I said “No. I’ll go home and put some Neosporin on it.” I went to the restroom, washed my arm off, the scratch (well, two scratches as it turned out) weren’t bad and went on my way, still determined to vote.

In reality the entrance to the cafeteria was 2 blocks Ewa (that’s ‘west’ for those of you in Rio Mainland) on a street called - Wai Nani Way. A street that is just 100 yards long. That’s it.

Entering the building I go to confirm my registration and relate my story. The sweet ladies there said, “Yes, we know. We ask, over and over again for signage to be posted on Kapahulu to tell people where they need to go to vote, and year after year, election after election, nothing ever gets done.”

If you are still with me this far, this is the serious part of the story. Here, our city administrators are willing to spend billions of dollars on a mass transit system that will, admittedly, do nothing to stem the tide of traffic congestion but they cannot, will not, spend a handful of dollars to direct voters to the correct voting locations. This is a misallocation of priorities. If one can’t do the little things right, you can’t to the big things correctly either.

So often the lament is about how low voter turnout is in Hawaii, but one has to wonder if this because of voter apathy or by design? My experience in some ways suggests that latter.

Had I been driving instead of walking I might have just given up rather than go through everything I did to ensure my right to vote. I have to wonder how true that was for, who knows how many, other voters. Weekends are precious time, who wants to spend an hour or two looking for the place where they are supposed vote?

In the end what should have been 30 minute leisurely walk to go vote turned into a 1-1/2 hour adventure. And, truth be told, I really don’t mind. I feel better for having voted than if I had just given up. But it does call into question, the priorities of our civic leaders. They seem to be so focused on the ‘big projects’ that will make a name for themselves that they totally disregard the small, but equally important, details.

As in when our current Mayor paved the first half Ala Wai Blvd when newly elected and has since neglected paving the rest.

Oh, sorry. That is another editorial. Don Newman lives in Waikiki.

ELECTIONS 2008...