Republican Charles Djou emerged victorious tonight in the special election to fill Hawaii’s vacancy in Congress, giving Hawaii it’s first GOP member of Congress in 20 years.
Djou won the special mail-in election with 39.5 percent of the vote in the first printout, released at 6 p.m.
The first printout represented nearly all of the 170,312 returned by voters in the district, which stretches from Waikiki and downtown to Mililani.
Democrat Colleen Hanabusa was second at 30.8 percent, with Democrat Ed Case third at 27.6 percent.
“This is a momentous day,” Djou told a jubilant crowd at state party headquarters. “We have sent a message to the United States Congress. We have sent a message to the ex-governors. We have sent a message to the national Democrats! We have sent a message to the machine.
“We have told them that we will not stand idly by as our great nation is overburdened by too much taxes, too much debt and too much wasteful spending.”
Djou is Hawaii’s first GOP member of Congress since Pat Saiki, who represented the party from 1987 to 1991.
Better not tell the unwashed masses they just had another great victory. If and when some type of video surfaces, (remember ‘the Scott heard round the world’), I’ll post it.
Congratulations Hawaii this is great news for all of us, even if it is under reported. Do you think now the pResident might not vacation so much there.
I am guessing if this can happen in Hawaii it could happen in California, I wonder if Pelosi, Boxer and the others are paying attention or do they still feel nothing can boot them out.
I don’t think any of them are that worried yet – especially with the Djou win. The general consensus is that Djou is going to get creamed in November by whichever Dem wins the primary. I don’t think that, but what do I know? I just live here.
This really is an amazing victory! The Dems just want to brush it off but they can’t…regardless of what they say a conservative Republican won for the first time in 20 years in 0bama’s own district! What part of “tsunami” don’t they understand? I can see November from my house.
Brian Bartlett on May 25, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I am very happy to see most Republicans win, particularly constitutional conservatives, but I think it is unrealistic to believe that this win is anything ground-breaking, or that it can be interpreted to be a repudiation of Obama, Reid and Pelosi and their policies.
There were two Democrats that together received about 58% of the vote; consequently, vote-splitting may have allowed Djou to win. On the other hand, vote-splitting may have had little impact on his ability to receive the most votes, but no one really knows for sure since he received less than 50%.
The “vote-for-only-one-candidate” plurality voting method is entirely inappropriate for elections with more than two candidates. For example, it is entirely possible for the most disliked candidate to be declared the winner. We need to improve our elections by rejecting the plurality voting rule that limits each person to voting for only one candidate. Two very good voting methods that allow a single voter to cast a ballot for more than one candidate, thereby avoiding the vote-splitting problem, are approval and range voting. Range voting is sometimes called score voting. Whatever we do, we must not use instant run-off voting (IRV). IRV is a really terrible voting method that is only very slightly better than plurality.
Charles Djou has just taken a decades long held seat away from the democrats in Oahu’s 1st District, and you know what I am hearing? …crickets…
New at Logistics Monster: Republican Charles Djou Wins Democrat Held Seat http://is.gd/cllqU
Charles Djou Victory Speech Video: http://bit.ly/ajohCW
Congratulations Hawaii this is great news for all of us, even if it is under reported. Do you think now the pResident might not vacation so much there.
I am guessing if this can happen in Hawaii it could happen in California, I wonder if Pelosi, Boxer and the others are paying attention or do they still feel nothing can boot them out.
I don’t think any of them are that worried yet – especially with the Djou win. The general consensus is that Djou is going to get creamed in November by whichever Dem wins the primary. I don’t think that, but what do I know? I just live here.
This really is an amazing victory! The Dems just want to brush it off but they can’t…regardless of what they say a conservative Republican won for the first time in 20 years in 0bama’s own district! What part of “tsunami” don’t they understand? I can see November from my house.
I am very happy to see most Republicans win, particularly constitutional conservatives, but I think it is unrealistic to believe that this win is anything ground-breaking, or that it can be interpreted to be a repudiation of Obama, Reid and Pelosi and their policies.
There were two Democrats that together received about 58% of the vote; consequently, vote-splitting may have allowed Djou to win. On the other hand, vote-splitting may have had little impact on his ability to receive the most votes, but no one really knows for sure since he received less than 50%.
The “vote-for-only-one-candidate” plurality voting method is entirely inappropriate for elections with more than two candidates. For example, it is entirely possible for the most disliked candidate to be declared the winner. We need to improve our elections by rejecting the plurality voting rule that limits each person to voting for only one candidate. Two very good voting methods that allow a single voter to cast a ballot for more than one candidate, thereby avoiding the vote-splitting problem, are approval and range voting. Range voting is sometimes called score voting. Whatever we do, we must not use instant run-off voting (IRV). IRV is a really terrible voting method that is only very slightly better than plurality.
http://www.rangevote.net/
http://approvalvoting.org/
http://rangevoting.org/