I've joked a lot over the years about O'ahu's neighborhood boards, which often look to me like supersized condominium associations where people get a little power and let it go to their heads.

The recent neighborhood board elections certainly didn't do anything to elevate my opinion. Only 20 percent of voters participated in the online balloting, there were no candidates for 62 of the 444 seats, half the seats had only one candidate and more than 100 candidates won with five votes or fewer.

Clearly, an apparatus intended to promote participatory democracy has become an expensive exercise in non-participation.

But after I appeared last week on Beth-Ann Kozlovich's "Town Square" program on Hawai'i Public Radio, I developed a new appreciation for the neighborhood boards — or at least for their potential to help fix what's ailing our political system.

The program was about the recently concluded Legislature, and neither I nor University of Hawai'i political scientist Ira Rohter could think of much positive to say about a session that featured a lot of political pettiness and little special achievement.

Evidently, the audience didn't have much more enthusiasm for the Legislature than we did; the silent phone lines had me fearing a repeat of my last appearance on "Town Square," which set a new low for listener call-ins.

Then a funny thing happened: Somebody said something about neighborhood boards, and the switchboard suddenly lit up after I derided the recent low voter turnout.

One candidate from Palolo who won with eight votes, a landslide in this election, said the city didn't send balloting packages to voters in areas with uncontested seats. She was impressed that seven voters besides herself went to the trouble of obtaining voter IDs on their own so they could vote for her.

A former neighborhood board administrator admitted public participation is poor, both in voting and meeting attendance, but argued the boards are worth nurturing as "an opportunity to speak out and be part of the system" at the most basic level.

Another caller said boards need to be empowered for more tangible decisionmaking in their communities, and Rohter suggested the best way to do this is to give the boards discretionary money to spend on local projects, as former Mayor Jeremy Harris did with his "visioning" concept.

"You don't participate if it doesn't matter to you," Rohter said. "A million dollars suddenly got a lot of people involved."

Harris' vision teams were subjected to ridicule — current Mayor Mufi Hannemann was a leading critic — because of costly projects of questionable value, such as the big rock markers on the Pali Highway proclaiming Nu'uanu's existence.

But good ideas also came from the process, such as creative traffic solutions, ways to restore the lost charm of old neighborhoods, beautification measures, utility realignment, environmental cleanup and better trails for hiking, jogging and biking.

The problems of inadequate accountability for the visioning money and poor coordination with the boards could be corrected by combining the two.

The recent election showed that the neighborhood board system is in serious need of improvement, starting with scaling back to a more manageable number of boards, districts that make more sense and simpler voting. An Advertiser editorial Monday had good suggestions on these points.

It seems worth an effort to energize the boards, if for no reason than to foster a body of independent and reform-minded community activists who might eventually move up and revitalize our turgid Legislature, City Council and Board of Education.

For all the problems the boards have experienced, I couldn't help but be impressed that they inspired so much more passion among public radio listeners than the Legislature.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.