It's no surprise that the Hawai'i Democratic Party came out strongly against holding a Constitutional Convention for the first time since 1978, a question that voters will decide in the general election.

What's not to like about the status quo if you're a political partisan with a "D" after your name?

Local Democrats are thriving in an environment of low voter turnout and campaign financing laws that border on legalized bribery.

The party controls 44 of the 51 seats in the state House and 21 of the 25 Senate seats, with some 40 percent of incumbent Democratic legislators running unopposed for re-election and most of the rest facing grossly under-financed challengers.

The Democratic Party and public employee unions have become an inseparable political force — and it's not necessarily the politicians calling the shots.

It's obviously a sweet deal that enables Democratic politicians, the unions and other lobbying friends to take care of their every desire, but it's equally obvious that the lack of competition and accountability doesn't serve the broader public interest.

It should be Job No. 1 of a ConCon, if there is one, to level the political playing field, make public office more accessible to competing ideas and engage turned-off voters who find no reason to participate anymore in a system stacked to keep power in the same hands.

The Democrats argue unconvincingly that the state Constitution was intended to be a stable document that should seldom be changed. If that was the case, the people who wrote it wouldn't have required that voters be asked every 10 years whether to hold a ConCon.

The Democrats' heavy-handed opposition to a ConCon, which includes a ridiculous estimate by the Legislative Reference Bureau that it could cost $41 million, may well backfire.

Sometimes you can  tell a lot about the merits of a proposition by who it scares the most.

Tags: ConCon, Constitutional Convention, Democratic Party

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 3:00 am and is filed under Volcanic Ash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.