Traditionally, Hawaii's citizens have felt fairly close to their government. We're still a small enough state so that many voters know their legislator by his or her first name and run into them at the mall, the grocery store or on the beach.

That leads to a level of confidence that government will respond to our thinking, maybe not always to our satisfaction, but at least we'll be heard. But as the gulf between lawmaker and citizen grows, the demand for other forms of influence naturally increases.

That's the primary cause of an organization called the Citizens in Change Foundation, a self-described "transpartisan" voter rights group focused on pushing the ideas of initiative, referendum and -- while they don't stress it --presumably recall.

The Foundation recently issued a "report card" on the 50 states for their performance on these matters. You can find it HERE.

Hawaii earned a "D" grade overall, but so did many states. We were given some credits for having local initiative and referendum rights (although these are limited) but no statewide initiative or referendum.

The implication of the report is that things could be improved if Hawaii citizens had a unilateral right to propose constitutional amendments, propose new state laws or put enacted laws up to a referendum

That's a debatable premise at best. While in an ideal world initiative, referendum and recall would be tools of the general public designed to keep elected officials in check, it rarely works that way. Generally (take a look at California, for instance), they become another avenue for big money to influence the public sector.

And with the U.S. Supreme Court now moving away from any kind of restrictions on the spending of big companies and big unions in the political arena, this trend will only become more pronounced.

If we cannot trust our elected representatives to work in our best interests, why do we have this system in the first place?