Five-O Is a Lot of Blank Ballots
Education issues are all the rage these days, but there’s a tendency to overestimate their effect on the electorate. The latest case in point comes courtesy of Hawaii, where seats on the State Board of Education were being contested as part of the primary election. Hawaii’s school system is run as a single district, so the SBOE races are the equivalent of school board races in a very large school district - say, Philadelphia.
Turnout was 43 percent, which historically wasn’t too bad, but 43 percent of those who voted didn’t bother to