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Everyone should take the personal responsibility to vote. We are all taught this in school in Hawaii. Our country's survival is dependent on this. From my experience as a polling place captain for three presidential cycles or six elections, may I share what is happening on the ground?
Every election with the most recent election, only about 45 percent of registered voters actually take the time to either vote or mail in their absentee voted ballots. Many lose them or forget and a few drop them off at the polls on Election Day. A nearly equal number never receive them because their address changed. A large number of voters show up at the wrong polling place because their driver's license are never updated (and the same ones show up every election with same wrong address). This is throughout the island.
We now have same-day registration at the polls which increased access and did increase turning out voters (albeit unregistered ones). This was most effective, as there were many mature adults who admitted they had never voted before that registered that day. Yet the absence of 55 percent of registered voters and equally more unregistered citizens who don't vote and or bother to register shows a problem still exists.
I know many close to me that choose not to vote and have never voted or registered and they are in the 60s and 70s. And they have no economic or physical barriers stopping them.
The remedy is to find a compelling reason to vote.
Thomas Fairbanks
Wailuku