Fairness at polls?
Fairness at polls?
I sincerely want to thank Democratic Chairman Phil Barnes for the very quick response to my original letter submitted March 29 (Tribune-Herald, Your Views), but unfortunately your explanation wasn’t a very convincing one.
We needed reasons why the polling places closed their doors so early and you really didn’t provide us with any legitimate answers. Offering walk-in registrations is a noble enticement, Phil, but the polls have to be open for this to work.
Is it ludicrous to suspect the polls closed early to discourage voter turnout? Probably, and even I’d have to agree with that, but turning potential voters away at the polls raises too many red flags. Did this happen just because of a lack of available ballots, or were there other reasons? What kind of a message are you sending here?
OK, as you say, you got caught off guard, you weren’t expecting such a big turnout and you ran out of ballots, particularly in Puna. But by your own admission, this same thing occurred back in the 2008 election with Barack Obama, too. How many more attempts are going to be made before we get this right?
After all the problems in the ’08 election, the excuse of not having enough ballots is hard to accept. Can you see why it’s so hard for some of us to shake off these pesky suspicions?
There’s something else to consider: When the Democratic Party agrees to willingly allow an independent Bernie Sanders to caucus with them, doesn’t this imply that he should be treated with the same degree of fairness? Maybe not.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t Tulsi Gabbard recently resign from the post of vice president of the Hawaii Democratic Party because she felt the party was favoring Clinton over Sanders? There are a few of us who just happen to agree with her.
Many of us are very concerned about whether Sanders is getting a fair shake with this party. With the super delegates waiting in the wings to put their mark on Hillary, Bernie needed as many of those delegates as he could get.
If the Democrats aren’t careful here, they’re going to look as bad as the Republicans!
Here’s a suggestion, Phil: If there aren’t enough ballots to go around, how would you feel about handing out rain checks?
Reed Vallance
Hilo
Kahele’s bad idea
The late state Sen. Gil Kahele is missed. But the bill he introduced to establish an aero technology campus in Hilo is misguided.
I’m a certified flight instructor with a commercial license, so I know about flight instruction.
It takes at least 40 hours of flight time to get a private pilot’s license (most students need double those hours). These flight hours have to be done under VFR, visual flight rules: Visibility has to be at least a mile (3 miles at night) and the plane has to be away from clouds.
Clear days in Hilo would be crowded as they are rare. If the school was successful, the airspace would be full of student pilots trying to complete their flight training. Most of those students would be working on their landings, with lots of “touch ’n’ go” landings — going around in circles, landing for a second, then climbing, circling, descending again to touch the runway. And do it again, to perfect the landing.
Keaukaha and Waiakea and more of Hilo would be buzzing all day and some nights with small (noisy) single-engine airplanes.
Better to put a flight training facility in an area where the airport is at least 3 miles away from (not next door to) a neighborhood. And where it doesn’t rain for days at a time!
There might not be enough demand to warrant the expense to build a school here. On the other hand, if there is enough demand and the school is a success, the surrounding neighbors will suffer.
Arla C. Meyer
Hilo