Before Hawaii’s August primary, Civil Beat asked candidates for public office throughout the islands to respond to questionnaires designed to help voters get to know them better.

Most of the candidates never responded.

The questions were tailored to the office sought, but everyone was asked to provide a little biographical information, including their background in community service.

We felt some questions were vital enough to ask of candidates for all offices, from nonpartisan county councils to the highly partisan U.S. Senate:

• This year has seen an outsized influence from people who want big changes in how government is run. What would you do to change how your jurisdiction is run?   
• Would you support eliminating Hawaii’s high fees for access to public records when the request is in the public interest?
• Voters complain their elected officials don’t listen to them. What would you do to improve communication?

One efffective response to that last question might be for candidates to take advantage of the media opportunities afforded them to communicate with voters.

We reached out to more than 300 candidates — a big task because when they filed with the Elections Office they provided their telephone numbers but not their email addresses. So we called them to find out where we could send the questionnaires. For those who didn’t answer or respond to messages, we went online to track down their email addresses whenever possible.

By the Aug. 13 primary, we had received and published 104 completed surveys.

Now the general election looms, with 85 candidates running for office statewide. Of those, 47 haven’t responded to our surveys. We tried to reach out to all those folks again. So far, four have responded with completed questionnaires.

Plenty of entrenched officeholders have ignored the requests. They probably consider themselves shoo-ins for re-election and in many instances they may be right. The dominance of incumbents undoubtedly helps feed the voter apathy that resulted in a record low turnout for the Hawaii primary.

We’d still like to see more responses to this survey question:

• Hawaii has long been dominated by the Democratic Party establishment. Should this change, and if so, how?

In some cases, surprisingly, we didn’t hear from lesser-known candidates seeking to knock off incumbents who did respond.

So who are the slackers? They’re too plentiful to name in this column, but here’s an easy way to find out. Click on our general election ballot guide and you’ll find the names of all the candidates. If they are highlighted with links, you can click on them and read their survey responses. If there is no link, that person is a no-show, except for Mason Chock, a candidate for the Kauai Council whose responses will be published soon.

The views of those who responded were often thoughtful and sometimes unexpected. The silence of those who didn’t is simply disappointing.

It’s possible that our repeated requests were never received by some candidates. But we’ve been persistent and one would think that people running for public office would make themselves easily accessible.

There’s still time for candidates to respond. If you’re on the ballot and haven’t received a questionnaire, send an email to news@civilbeat.com and we’ll get it to you.

If you have received the survey but simply haven’t responded, now’s the time.

What have you got to lose by telling voters where you stand?