Letters for Sunday, October 21, 2018

Uninformed vote not what is needed

Regarding the recent rant on voting: While encouraging voter participation is laudable, more important is the encouragement of informed civic participation. Nowhere was that mentioned or suggested in the rant.

This begs the question: If you advocate dragging (and also shaming) people to get out and vote, does society benefit if those votes are not informed?

Casting an informed vote takes as much time and effort as each individual is willing to devote to the process.

An uninformed absentee ballot can be cast in less than three minutes. If uninformed, which action is more productive: Doing something/anything for the sake of acting; or, doing nothing until one’s action is informed?

Frank Kelly, Koloa

ConAm was a bad idea

The proposed constitutional amendment to allow the state of Hawaii to tax property “for benefit of education” was a sham. It reminded me of when California voted to establish a lottery “for the benefit of education.”

The lottery was established but the school funding stayed the same. Whatever money provided by the lottery to schools was offset by the Legislature removing normal funding.

Likewise, the Hawaii Legislature decides educational funding. Giving the state the ability to tax property would have resulted in property owners passing added tax burdens on to renters as soon as they could. And higher rents is not what we need. Educational funding will remain whatever the Legislature wants it to be. Count on it.

Mike Taylor, Princeville