 Think Tech Away, Civil Engagement Lives Here. Welcome back to Think Tech here on a Human Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. I'm Jay Fidel. Our special show today is called ConCon 101. We're going to talk about constitutional conventions. It's very important, as you'll find out, that we cover constitutional conventions now and on the way to November so that we all understand what it is, how it works here and elsewhere as a comparative analysis and what issues are going to come up and how we should cast our vote in November about ConCon here in Hawaii. A very interesting discussion, one that is very important to civic engagement. So for this program, we have Jay H. Schneider, and he's flown in from Boston, I guess, huh? Maryland. Maryland was right near Boston. Yeah, pretty close. He's the editor of the Hawaii State ConCon Clearinghouse, yeah? And he fashions policy around ConCon all over the country. And then we have Peter Adler, he's director of Think Tech. And he is also the director of Accord 3.0 Network. Thank you so much for being here, Peter. Pleasure. So I guess the first question is, and I told you I was going to ask you this, Jay H. How'd you get into the studio? What are you here for? Well, Hawaii has a referendum on November 6th, and it's the next state. There are 14 states with this institution. Hawaii is the next one in the cycle. Most states that have the institution have it once every 20 years. Hawaii has it once every 10 years. In addition to running the Hawaii State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, I run a clearinghouse for the 14 states that have this institution. And typically, the level of information about why this exists in the Constitution and what the function of this institution is very poor. And so I try to elevate the discussion. What do you mean poor? I mean, how has it revealed itself as poor? Well, most Americans apparently don't even know they have a state constitution, let alone that there's a mechanism to change it via a state constitutional convention. Americans are not taught in school why we have this institution. What is its distinctive function in the state constitution? And what are the important issues that this type of institution can address that our other mechanism legislatively initiated constitutional amendments? The sad commentary on the state of public education about government. It's very sad. America used to focus on state government in the 19th century. It was more important, but as power shifted to the federal government, and we basically nationalized our curriculum for college tests and whatnot, people simply don't learn about their state constitutions. I would be surprised if a tenth of one percent of Hawaiians, probably much less have even read their state constitution. The most fundamental thing is people often don't even know they have a state constitution. We try to help them here at Think Tech, and Peter does at Accord 3.0 Network. And I would imagine this almost no education about Hawaii's state constitution in the schools. They learn about the federal constitution. You can take into any American government, it's there. It's problem all over. College students, they learn about American government, they don't learn about it. So as the editor of the Hawaii State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse and the other publications you handle for those 14 other states, again, what is your mission? What do you hope to achieve? And again, why are you here? Well, on the website, I put everything that's available online, pro and con. So every op-ed, every new story from this cycle is on the website, as well as a lot of auxiliary information in terms of government websites and historical documents. So in addition to the current cycle, I have every cycle going back to 1950 information. So Hawaii's had three state constitutional dimensions since its founding, 1950, 1968, and 1978, and it's also had multiple referendum. And I tried to put all that information there so when reporters and opinion leaders are trying to say something thoughtful about it, they can look at the history of the institution. You've written a number of articles, too, of local publications on this subject. I've written a series for Civil Beat and the Honolulu Star Advertiser. And I will write more trying to get people prepared to have a thoughtful discussion about it. Now, my position is I am a defender of the institution. I think it provides – I think there's no more fundamental political right than the right to reform your constitution. And it's meaningless if you can't bypass the legislature in implementing that right. So you're not casting either for or against having a constitution, any specific point of power? That is not my focus, but because I am defending the institution as a democratic institution, I want people to understand its democratic function, why it exists in the constitution, and provide comparative and historical information so they understand how it's functioned in the past, why Hawaii's framers and ratifiers approved this institution and the constitution. So I just would like an elevated discussion and I will defend the institution if people spirit, but if also people say things that can't be justified. I mean, all democratic institutions are flawed. Peter, why are you here? Well, first of all, I'm very interested in this topic. This is an outgrowth of a conference that you and I were both involved in last December on trying to elevate the level of civic engagement and participation. Hawaii is not doing very well in that. We don't have a very good public discourse. We don't have civil debates. And then we talked about that in December. And that was them. And one of the outgrowth of it was a group that I pulled together, which is just concluded in March. And we wanted to take up a discussion about the prospects of a constitutional convention that will be on the ballot in November. And not so much to debate the yes or no, but rather to kind of lift up the rock and understand some of the nuanced issues of it. It was very successful. We had three wonderful discussions. We held those at the Civil Beat Law Center thanks to Brian Black who just let us use his room and participated. And the upshot of it is that there would be four articles coming out that summarize what we talked about. You will never hear in those articles are we for or against. So just like JH, we're really interested in trying to elevate the discussion and have a more educated discussion about it. And I'd just like to say that's an incredibly important thing to try to have a thoughtful discussion because the no campaign will come out, especially during the last month if the public continues to support the institution. And those will be sound bite sized arguments. So to have a PR type argument. Yeah, so be advertising. To have a thoughtful discussion is just very important. Yeah, well let's talk about that. I mean that's obviously the focus for both of you guys and for us. A thoughtful discussion. But we recognize that there will be people who will knee-jerk oppose any constitutional convention. So can we talk about what they would say in opposition and who they are? Well, first of all, there's sort of a formula that's been worked out over these states and a pretty effective formula to defeat these institutions. So one of the things is first of all not to have a discussion. It turns out if you don't have a discussion and you create fear, people tend to vote no. They don't understand something and it seems risky, they'll vote no. So the first thing the opposition has to do is to not want a discussion and at least not till very late in the process. But a critical issue is why do we have this institution? And the opposition will say we already have a mechanism in place to amend the constitution. That's legislatively initiated constitution. How does that work in Hawaii? What do you have to do to get an amendment through, such as the real property tax amendment that just got passed by the legislature? Well, the legislature has to approve a constitutional amendment and then it does go to the public for ratification. That's the simple majority vote in the constitution. I believe in Hawaii it is a simple majority. So just as any bill, they adopt this amendment but it has to be ratified. Except the governor doesn't have veto power. He doesn't sign a good bypass as in because it's a special kind of bill. Yes. And then the second mechanism is completely bypasses the legislature in initiating the process. You have this referendum in November, which does what the legislature would be. Should we have a constitutional... By the way, the legislature could also propose calling it a constitutional convention but it won't. It doesn't accept on a ten-year basis. Why is the legislature, and I was getting at who would oppose this and it sounds like the legislature itself is one of the institutional groups that would oppose it. Why would the legislature oppose it? I think it's not the legislature. It's a highly more advanced politician who already in power would say, look, we have the form to do the changes that people want, come to the legislature. So they would oppose it. I think many of the gains that have been done over the last 20 years by unions, by native Hawaiians, others would come out and say, you know, we put things at risk if we have another con con. It's fear, as you were saying a moment ago. Yeah, we haven't really gotten to the politics here. We've sort of alluded to them. The first issue is what is the function of this institution? The function is to have a way to bypass the legislature's veto power on constitutional amendment. Obviously, there are issues like legislative term limits, independent redistricting, legislative transparency, the legislature wants to have nothing to do with it. They're not going to propose amendments. The function, the modern function of this institution is to have this alternative mechanism. In most states that have a bypass mechanism, they use the popular initiative, the popular constitutional initiative. Hawaii doesn't have that. Its founders chose this bypass mechanism, which I think has significant advantages over the popular initiative as a bypass mechanism. So who else would oppose a con con and participate in the anti-con con debate, excuse me, public relations campaign, say this summer? Who else is out there that we can expect assistance from? I have an academic essay which looks at the politics of this institution that's evolved over the last 240 years and how those groups have changed. In Hawaii and in the other states, basically since the 1980s, it happens to be unions are the chief opponents. They organize the opposition. They put together very impressive coalitions. And they're not the only part of the opposition. Very conservative Republicans who don't like the idea. As soon as you mention constitution, it's like changing the Bible. They're going to be opposed. And heavily regulated groups that do any group that does really well in the legislature does not like a constitution. So the ones who like the status quo are going to oppose. Yes. Not Republicans and Democrats. It's really sort of reform versus status quo. We don't have any Republicans. There's actually a dissertation on Hawaii's 1968 constitution. And now it's its analytical framework. There were the status quo forces and the reform forces. And that's how he structures the political debate. So one more question before we go to the break is you talked about a campaign, kind of a PR campaign. And I wonder what your thoughts are about. When we might expect to see that come up, it sounds like that's the first salvo, the kind of the Fort Sumter salvo here. And how will we notice, what will we see? What is going to happen? Who's going to do what? Well, we can talk about the last referendum we had in 2008. The general strategy of the opposition is to come out as late as possible in the process. And they can do that if there's no educational discussion or four campaign early, which doesn't look like it, why there is going to be... It's a very interesting point, JH. If there is a concon 101 kind of discussion, where there's somebody getting out there and trying to make the people understand this, then the guys who oppose it will have to come out earlier, no? That's right, yeah. But I would say the default, and most likely in Hawaii, I would wait until September before the opposition. And when the opposition comes out, they'll have dozens of groups all signed on. It'll be much more professional than any yes campaign. There's no indication of any substantial yes campaign. Don't forget September 17th. September 17th. It's Constitution Day, yes. Yes, Constitution Day. Yeah. Right. But actually universities often hold events on Constitution Day. So how do you think it would reveal itself, Peter? I think JH is right. I think what's going to happen over the summer is we'll see more and more discussion, whether it be here at Think Tech, Civil Beat, public broadcasting in the Star Advertiser. We'll start to see the letters to the editors, the commentaries, and that kind of stuff. And then late in the summer, we'll start to see the debate sharpened. And that's when, predictably, you know, the issues will start to... The hopes and the fears and the pros and the cons, depending on who's talking, will all start to roll out. And I would emphasize the last few weeks before the referendum. That's when the advertisers... That's when the advertisers... Yeah. It all depends on the polls. Right now, the yes vote is ahead in the polls. Is that right? It's early for that. That's right. If that holds up to be a massive set of attack ads to come out, mostly in the last few weeks, and then people's attention, but it's rather late in the process when they don't even know what a constitution is. It's all about timing. Yeah. It's all about timing. And so is our show, all about timing. And that's why we're going to take a break right now. Bingo. Hi. My name is Bill Shaw, our host of Asia and Review, coming to you from Honolulu, Hawaii, right here in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Asia Review is the oldest of the 35 or so shows broadcast by Think Tech Hawaii. We've been in production since 2009. Our goal is to provide you, the viewer, with information, breaking information about events in Asia, Asia being anything from Hawaii west of Pakistan, from the Russian Far East south to Australia and New Zealand. We hope to see you every Monday afternoon at 5 p.m. Hi. I'm Ethan Allen, your host on Think Tech's likeable science show. Every Friday at 2 p.m., we delve in the magical, magical, fascinating world of science. How science applies to your life, why you should care about science, what impact science has on you and on those around you, why you need to know some science. It's a fun, interesting, painless way to learn some good science, some good science that you can use. See you there. Okay. It is all about timing. We came back. We came back like bro-cream. We came back. Bro-cream. Well, MacArthur, if you like. That's Peter Adler on the far left and J.H. Snyder next to me. We're talking about ConCon 101. We're trying to get a handle on what it is and how it will work and who will be on what side of it. And gee whiz, elevating the discussion and public understanding. So the next part I'd like to talk about, ask you guys about it. So we have a general handle on who would oppose this and how they would oppose it and when they would oppose it. That's really a lot of good information. But who would support it? What groups can you predict will support it and how will they do that? J.H.? So it's a classic collective action problem. No campaign has ever been invested in the status quo, which are the leading well-organized groups in the legislature. And the yes folks tend to be very dispirited. The track record of passing things. People don't want to invest time and energy in what's perceived as a hopeless cause. So every time it gets defeated, it makes it harder the next time around. So traditionally, some good government groups have spoken up some. The good government community is often split on this issue because they're very dependent on legislators to get their own amendments in. They have to survive year in after, year out. They've got to get led. Because nobody wants to help good government groups unless they're effective. Who would you... League of Women Voters. League of Women Voters. During the middle of the 20th century, they were the leading advocates for state constitutional inventions. I believe in Hawaii also, they were leading advocates. The League? The League. But beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, the League, which is much weaker than it was, in a classic book called Bowling Alone by the famous Harvard sociologist, political scientist, talks, has a section on the decline of the League in America. It's much less influential. But generally, the best you hope is that the League will engage in a thoughtful education campaign and be neutral on the issue. They tend not to have much expertise any longer on these issues. Anybody else? Who's out there? Sometimes there are local good government groups. And those have been really critical in Hawaii. And those groups have not stepped up. Common cause, I despair of for a variety of reasons. They're part of a coalition today that they need to survive as an institution. They're much, much weaker like the League than they were in the 70s in John Gardner's era. And I should say, I lived in Vermont. I was the research chair on the board of the local chapter of Common Cause. So they should be all their core issues on redistricting reform, legislative transparency, big advocates. But they sort of stayed out of it. Who's left? I'm despairing myself here. Who's left? Yeah, go ahead. Let me try a little bit. So I think you're looking at organizations and I'm not sure that's the place to look at the moment. And I'm not arguing, I'm not advocating one way or another, but I do think one of the things we've learned in December at our participation conference was the declining confidence and trust in government. And there's a declining trust in all institutions, whether it's churches, universities, science institutes, it doesn't matter. But government's at the bottom of those downward trends. And that's also here in Hawaii. Colin Moore gave us some numbers from that he had found that showed the same thing. So if people have confidence, this is a test of confidence. And if people feel that they have the confidence in the existing political structure through the legislature, through councils, or all the derivative things that come from constitutions, then they will say, we don't need it. On the other hand, people are disgruntled. Then they're going to say, we do need some structural reform. Some of this may wash over from national politics. Especially in this administration. That's exactly right. So I think people who... It's not a specific group. It's not League of Women Voters Common Cause or winning the specific advocacy groups. I think it's going to be something more subterranean. It's grassroots, I guess. But are we talking about existing institutions who might form coalitions? Or are we talking about brand new institutions that come together with disgruntled members of the electorate? Or both? It may be both. I don't think... It's too soon to know that, I think, personally. I mean, J.H. may know of other states and how... Well, I could give you some examples. We haven't discussed think tanks and government affairs institutes. Some of them have a problem because they get state funding. But some of them have shriven to have thoughtful debates on this issue. And that can help a lot. And I don't know to what extent there are local institutes that are independent law schools, public affairs. And sometimes they have their own sort of agendas and Rhode Island, the local public affairs, since it was very involved. And they tried to get the school leaders, because they are the major educators of school board members. They come to the institutes to pursue their issues. It fits with the agenda. In other states that you're covering, how does it happen that the existing grassroots-type organizations, they plan to be involved in this conversation, they look for issues, or do the issues find them? And they build themselves around a given issue that they hope will be taken up at the Constitutional Convention. Well, in New York, where the last one took place, Citizens Union was hardly the leader. They go back to the great progressive era in New York from the 1890s, and they're very well respected in New York. They have small staff, like three or four people, and they forget every 20 years sort of about the issue. They have to start from scratch. And they went out, and they were, during the debates, the newspapers and whatnot held, they were often the, as folks, they put together pretty good literature and whatnot. But you anticipated, you could anticipate that this organization and organizations like it would rise up to the occasion, it would go out and find it, it would be charming to participate. Most states don't have a Citizens Union that has this long tradition and credibility with the media and whatnot. And there was another fellow, a wealthy individual that also ran a local radio show, whose father was one of the great champions of state constitutional inventions in the 1960s and whatnot. And so he had sort of a family interest, and he took it on himself. He hired a very talented graphic artist and whatnot. They did a bunch of things that were impressive, but at the end of the day, it was, you know, a hundred to one or more in terms of financial resources and organizations, probably a thousand to one. I mean, you can't motivate people like teachers who are worried about losing their pensions. I mean, they'd made 500,000 phone calls in New York. There's nobody, like, who would do that on behalf of a convention or something like that? They got 300,000 signs on it, like on every block in New York. Well, somebody had a galvanized... Well organized. If I'm concerned about an issue, taking a teacher's issue, take any issue really, it can't be handled by the legislature. And I want to have a constitutional convention here in Hawaii. I'm framing this as a how-to question. How do I establish a coalition? If I wake up one morning, whether I'm part of a group like Common Cause or the Citizens Union or not, and I say, I want to participate because I want some relief in this constitutional convention. How do you, politically, how do you build a coalition? Who do you call? What foot do you put out first in order to make this happen? Well, just one thing that, yes, folks, do tend to do very well. They tend to do well on the op-eds, very well on the editorials. Yes, unfortunately nobody reads op-eds anymore, and they're not very useful. They used to be much more influential. So that's pretty discouraging. Let's put it in terms of Hawaii, Peter. So you would treat it, if I was activated by a particular issue. Let's say, I mean, just decentralizing out of a single school district, whatever it is, you know, or term limits. If I was on that side of the argument, which I'm not, I'm ambivalent myself. But I would treat it like you would any other campaign, any other campaign. You would start with neighborhoods, you would start to, you remember like the Live Aloha campaign with bumper stickers and here's 10 things. I mean, it's a mobilization effort. A mobilization effort. But you've got to remember that everybody on the no side is also mobilizing and they will have a lot of resources. But you would treat it the same way. You would treat it the same way as you would in, you know, kind of a community issue, but scaled up. Well, let me ask you my closing question. I'll ask you both. So here we are, and it's October, maybe September, October. And there has been that PR campaign talked about. This has been an education campaign. Hopefully we can all participate in public awareness. Now the public has a certain understanding. It's heard from the naysayers. It's heard, or it's hearing from, you know, the grassroots, if you will. The ones who would like, you know, the con con to provide a certain relief to them. What do you predict will happen? Well, that could be very confusing at the end if there's lots and lots of issues. People say a pox on all of this is too complicated. I don't want to participate in this. Well, there's just one other kind of, what, complexifying factor. On the ballot in November, there will be two issues about the Constitution, not one. So the one whether there should be a constitutional convention is a decadal question. It'll come up. It's forced to come up. But the other constitutional question is the one the legislature just put on there, which has to do with the use of property taxes for this. It's complexifying. So all of a sudden you've got these two things and you might wind up voting for one, not the other, or you can move for both. So there's going to be a lot of confusion just by the appearance of the ballot. So we should all, you know, try to have people understand what that's all about. There's a whole bunch of confusing things about the ballot. The most fundamental, I know I've said just on this and the Star Advertiser doesn't clearly mention it's a state constitutional convention that you're voting on there. It says most people don't know they even have a state constitution. They'll think they're going to be, the idea is to, you know, revise the federal constitution, which people think of as sort of a bible. There's just so much confusion. Taking all of that into account, okay, and trying to look down the road. And I know the road is kind of foggy right now. I don't like where this is going. You're going to love my last question here. So can you guys make a prediction for me about what's going to happen here? And I'm asking for a simple answer. Will people vote for it or not? Will we have one or not? Wow. I think the opposition is, right now it's ahead. The Civic Beach poll suggested it's way ahead. And the problem is the opposition will spend whatever it takes to defeat it at the end. Spend a lot too. Oh yeah. So you have to be very pessimistic. By the way, the campaign finance laws in Hawaii, just, it's mostly, even though it's normally there, you're not going to see it. What do you mean in Hawaii? How about the whole country? That's right. Yes, yes. But I think in the last one you had like a half dozen items on the referendum. There was zero money reported, spent on it. So it's just a chronic problem here. So you're pessimistic. I think you have to be pessimistic. Now if you have a missile alert type of situation, I mean America could change and change. It's all driven by crisis. The only time you get democratic reforms is one of the tragedies on this issue. It's a classic, you know, below the public radar collective action problem. But it's exciting. Unless you have something urgent, it's very difficult to have. It's exciting. It's a great example of our democratic process. And you guys are both committed, and so am I, into having the process work as well as it can, having people understand it. What's your prediction? So, I'm sorry to beg the question, but someone asked Chaoan Lai, the former premier of China, when he was fairly senior and getting ready to step down, they said, what do you think of the French Revolution? And he said, it's too soon to tell. That's where I think it's too soon to tell. Peter Adler, Core 3.0 Network, and J. H. Snyder from the, let me get this right, the interior of the Hawaii State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse. Thank you so much for showing up. I bless you both for being involved in this conversation, and I hope it gets very robust as we go forward.