It is the time when the ballots are being sent out to registered voters. Some acquaintances of this blogger have already received their respective ballots, and the distribution will continue throughout the weekend. By this time next week, all eligible voters will have received a ballot to indicate their preferred candidates for the upcoming general election in November.

In many elections, the decision of who will be the next council member, mayor, representative, or senator will be determined at this point in the election cycle. With only one viable candidate or sometimes only one candidate running, and fewer candidates in general, the options for some races are limited.

And, surprise, the candidates whose names are on those ballots are also aware that the voters might not be too enthusiastic about the choices offered.

So, in races that donʻt seem to be very competitive like the Honolulu Mayorʻs race, you will still see efforts by the candidates to get out and be visible to the public. Sign waving, signposting and mailers to everyone are just a few of the ways the candidates are hustling for your vote.

But moving down-ballot, to some of the Honolulu City Council races, where there is only one candidate, you will still see them working for your vote. For instance, District 9 Councilmember Augusto Tulba is actively sign-waving and talking to constituents.

In one of his posts, he is seen racing with kids through an obstacle course and keeping up with them. Impressive he did that in dress shoes no less.

But the alert reader may ask “But they are unopposed? Why work so hard anyway?” The reason is that every candidate, even the unopposed, has a built-in opponent in every race. And the name of this opponent is an entity called “Blank Vote”.

Who is “Blank Vote”? Simply put it’s a ballot where in specific races, no candidate is selected. The race on that ballot is left blank and thus, counted as such in the final counts as a blank vote.

Now in most cases, with contested races, and even more so with hotly contested races, the blank vote category is very small. And in some cases when the race is not hotly contested by the candidate listed as beloved by their community, then they show support by voting for them, keeping the blank vote tally low.

But in some cases, unopposed or lightly opposed incumbent candidates who the voters are more lukewarm about may show their displeasure on the choices by not choosing in that race. There are examples in the past where unopposed candidates would receive a high level of blank votes. The campaigns took note of this as a sign that the candidate, while they would win the race, had a bit of work to do when it came to constituent and voter relations.

Blank votes also serve as a bellwether as to the viability of a current candidate’s political future. If they seem popular and do not face a “protest vote” by voters not voting for them, then their prospects for political advancement (higher office, different office), are seen to be higher.

A high blank vote against the sole candidate can also signal to potential future candidates that there is a chance to run and maybe win that race the next time it’s on the ballot. It is these factors, and even more, that make the “blank vote” item a must-see item in every poll result.

And it is the reason why you still see the candidates working for your vote, despite the lack of choices in this election cycle, here in Hawaii.

This blogger would first like to shout out to Civil Beat for distributing questions to the candidates and publishing them promptly. Furthermore, this blogger also wants to recognize that the questions being posed are relevant to what is happening currently, which leads to this piece – an observation of answers to one question.

In the set of questions, each candidate was asked, paraphrasing, what did you think of the recent state income tax cut that the Governor signed into law? More specifically, the question asked, “How do you feel about the massive income tax cut just approved by the Legislature and the governor? Do you have any concerns that it will force reductions in state services in the years to come?”

Now in a way, it’s a leading question, almost begging for an answer that fits the question. The interesting thing is that a lot of the candidates who submitted answers came back with nearly the same response,

“Yeah, I like it, but….”

The “but” part was largely about whether the state would be able to meet its financial obligations after the budget cuts take effect, potentially reducing the state’s revenue. This is a fair concern because if a household has less money coming in (for example, if a family member’s income is reduced or if someone starts a new job at a lower salary), there would naturally be worry about making ends meet.

In the case of the state, the worry is about whether essential services to the people would be affected. Some, like House District 20 candidate Tina Nakada Grandinetti, are saying that it will impact social services. Other candidates, such as House District 24 candidate Jillian Anderson, believe it will require the state to “do more with less”.

Here is the thing about both the focus of the question, and how some of the candidates answered it. For years, going back to the Ige administration, the state never faced a deficit. The last time this blogger remembers a crisis that would put the state into a budget deficit was during the Lingle, and going back more, the Cayetano administrations.

And both of those times, the books did get balanced through a combination of hacking the budget, changing retirement policy for state employees into the Employment Retirement System, and withholding spending to nonprofits.

That has not been the case for several years. And all during that time the State hemmed and hawed at the idea that it had to give back surplus monies to the people when the state experienced a budget surplus. See Article VII, Section 6 of the Hawai‘i State Constitution.

It even got to the point where, in an amendment to that article, in 2010 and 2016, to move surplus monies to the rainy day or pension funds. The state, over the past decade, has done all three and still, there is money left over.

Yes, while the expenses for providing government services have increased, there was never any question about whether they would get paid. Now, with the tax cut, everyone is concerned about whether we can cover our bills.

This blogger finds that a bit alarmist and indicative of an underlying message whenever any of the candidates says, “I like it, but…”, in that they are also pointing the finger at the current legislature and its members, and saying point blank, “we don’t trust that you have considered all issues when you passed this bill.”

Are the candidates who said “We like the tax break, but…” going to get elected, and then as soon as they are seated, start expressing concerns about the state budget and moving towards reversing the recently passed tax breaks?

We will have to see. As a public service announcement, residents eligible to vote will get their ballots in the mail on or about the 23rd of July.

As with many in Hawai‘i over the past month, the 13th convening of the Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture, in Hawai‘i for the first time, brought a great deal of excitement to Honolulu in and above the normal rigamarole of everyday life after graduation season.

From the news reports, the Festival turned out to be very popular, with many more in attendance than first imagined. Estimates right now say that about 500,000 attendees for its 11-day duration.

Even for people, like this blogger, who go to many cultural events and think of the attendance as “meh”, the fact that a half-million came out to this one, in Hawai‘i, was impressive.

With the event being so far and wide, it turned out that one of these humble writers’ co-workers was working the event, taking time to be there.  In that discussion about their attendance, a historical marker came up that I don’t think they knew.

That was the vision that the second state Governor of Hawai‘i, John Burns had about what Hawai‘i could be as it became the 50th state. The person sounded interested but probably knew nothing about this part of Hawai‘i’s history, and how 49 years after Burns’s death, his vision came alive with FestPac.

WHEN JOHN BURNS WAS elected governor in 1962, Hawai‘i was within a handful of years of becoming a state, in 1959. As he evolved as a leader in the state, winning elections again in 1966 and 1970, he began and then promoted a vision of the future of Hawai‘i.

A big part of that vision came from the idea that Hawai‘i, now emerging onto the world stage as part of the United States, could become a true “crossroads of the Pacific” in which the exchange of ideas from Asia, and the United States/west, could come together in friendly exchange, elevating the state and its importance in the world.

It was a lofty goal and required a vision that looked beyond bringing people to Hawai‘i for events. It first started with building up an infrastructure that could handle the capacity of more people coming to Hawai‘i. That build-out included roads and airports.

The other part was marketing the islands as a premier destination. While some will criticize Burns for marketing the islands more for tourists, he did try to expand this out by establishing more durable economic exchanges with Pacific Rim countries  

Unfortunately, at the end of his term, due to illness, as he passed away in office, Burns had created the baseline for Hawai‘i’s ability to be a destination for people and cultural exchanges like FestPac.

It only took another 49 years to see that vision happen.

THE REASON WHY FestPAC finally brought Burns’s vision to life is that it held all the hallmarks of what he wanted to see as an event highlighting Hawai‘i’s role as a crossroads of the Pacific.

One of those hallmarks was accessibility. The fact that a reported 500,000 people attended should assume that a vast majority of that attendance was done by local folks. Unlike other major events in Hawaii, such as the Asia Development Bank (ADB) meeting in 2001 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders’ Meeting in 2011, regular people could celebrate alongside the attendees.

Both of those cited events were indeed high profile but also had high barriers for most people to attend. This blogger recalls how the authorities limited the ability of people to protest at the Asian Development Bank meeting, literally putting up barriers and herding them into a small corridor as a planned protest march.

For APEC, it more felt like it was an event that Hawai‘i didn’t want to do, but because President Obama was from Hawai‘i and it was the United State’s turn to host, Hawai‘i got the gig. But as with the ADB, the ability for anyone resident to “just go and check it out” was not possible.

While Hawai‘i does host great cultural events like Night in Chinatown, the Okinawan Festival, the Honolulu Festival, and even the Memorial Day lantern floating at Ala Moana Beach Park, that the public can attend, their overall imprint on Hawai‘i is already baked in, meaning that everyone knows what will happen, what food will be there and what the event is for.

FestPac, instead, was something new, and exciting which piqued the curiosity of the state, along with it feeling that it was bigger than just a cultural festival. Leaders came (like the King of Aotearoa, Te Arikinui Tūheitia Pākī) of which people could go see and be amongst.

And that in itself creates memories, good memories, of which people in Hawai‘i might want to see more of, in the future.

WHILE IT MIGHT NOT BE FESTPAC, as the event happens only once every four years and as mentioned, a location may get to host it once in a lifetime, that should not mean that Hawai‘i couldn’t see more of this type of event happening in the state.

For instance, there are Pacific-regional events that, if Hawai‘i could figure out how to build a stadium, could host a Pacific regional sports event like the Pacific Games.

And maybe it does not need to be that big of an event. Maybe what Hawai‘i could do is what Taiwan regularly does and host specific non-governmental events and promote them as resident-attend friendly. This blogger remembers being in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and seeing the promotion of the “Universiade”, which is now called the World University Games.

And who knows, maybe if Hawai‘i is tapped to do APEC again, or another international governance event like APEC, maybe the state can inform the entity that it would like to have the ability to have more touch with the people of Hawai‘i while here.

After all, one thing that Burns wanted to have in his vision was for those events to be relevant.