Letters To The Editor
A nasty attack
Bob Jones’s nasty, personal attack against two hard-working public servants in his column “Playing Hide The Facts At City Hall” is unforgivable. While the rest of the public and the press recently followed stories regarding the Waikiki Natatorium’s future, Mr. Jones zeroed in on a response given by the city to a KITV reporter who had made a lazy one-sentence inquiry asking whether the EIS had been canceled.
Later, when KITV was scooped on the natatorium story by other journalists doing a more thorough job, its reporter retaliated by accusing the city of covering up facts. Mr. Jones, who is married to former KITV reporter Denby Fawcett, took it even further in his personal column and bashed the names and reputations of two good people who did not deserve this.
The fact is the state has expressed interest in taking back the natatorium from the city. The state may do so with or without the city’s consent. Accordingly, the EIS was put on hold but not canceled to save taxpayer dollars until the issue was resolved.
None of this was held back from the reporters who took the time to ask. Press secretary Louise Kim McCoy and Department of Design and Construction director Lori Kahikina are well-respected and valuable city employees who were doing their jobs.
Last week, Bob Jones did not.
Doug Chinn,
Managing Director,
City and County of Honolulu
Electoral wisdom
Whenever I read yet another call for the end of the Electoral College (Dan Boylan, Oct. 15) from someone from a smaller state, I have to shake my head in amazement. The Electoral College is in fact a brilliant mechanism that ensures our elections are not determined solely by the cities and states with the largest populations. Instead, it levels the playing field for smaller states and cities.
Just do the math: Hawaii has four electoral votes out of 538, or 0.743 percent of the electoral votes. There are about 700,000 eligible voters in Hawaii and about 200 million eligible voters in the U.S., so if popular vote was used to choose the president, Hawaii would have 0.35 percent of the vote. In other words, every Hawaii voter has more than twice the influence under the Electoral College system than we would if just votes were counted.
Our forefathers put this in place precisely to ensure that voters in rural areas and small states would have a chance to influence the outcome of elections. If popular vote were used, only the top cities and states would determine the election result.
Michael Richards
Kaneohe
Send your letters to dchapman@midweek.com. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.
