The dates for the Honolulu City Council District 4 Special Election were announced today.
(Takahashi) “The election will be held on Saturday, April 13th.”
Glen Takahashi, City Clerk, announced the District 4 Special Election for registered voters from Hawai’i Kai to Waikiki. He said it will be a mail-in election for candidates Trevor Ozawa and Tommy Waters …
“Wednesday, February 27th we need to mail out ballots to military and overseas voters of the district. There are over 200 persons that fall into that category and that’s about 45 days prior to the election day. There will be a voter registration deadline of March 14th. The bulk of the ballots will be mailed out on March 21st. We will be having early walk-in voting also at Honolulu Hale only between April 1st and April 13th, excluding Sunday.”
The City Clerk’s Office will run the election and provide same-day voter registration during the early voting period and on Saturday April 13th at Honolulu Hale. The polls will close at 6pm and ballots will be in the hands of City Clerk Elections officials at that time. Governor David Ige, who signed the special election proclamation, says the ballot collection process was clarified by the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday.
“I think most of us would want to count as many ballots that we can that have been delivered, that constituents have signed and dropped in the mailbox. And, I think, that all the county practices were designed with that in mind. Obviously, this Supreme Court ruling says that it has to be physically collected by county personnel before 6 p.m. So, we definitely are implementing procedures to ensure that that happens.”
The ballots will be counted April 13th and the results announced. But, there’s also a 20-day contested or challenge period followed by a possible judicial review before a winner can be certified. Again, City Clerk Takahashi.
“We’re expecting that this will be about $250-thousand to run this election. It’s about 66-thousand registered voters roughly in between the size of the entire County of Kaua’i and the County of Maui in terms of relative scale.”
Meanwhile, the Honolulu City Council will select a District 4 councilmember to fill the vacancy. Interim Chair Ann Kobayashi says all names will be considered and voted on by next week.
“We’ve sent out notice to the members that they can suggest names, we’ve tried to reach out to the district, and we’ve been getting phone calls, people saying, ‘I would like to be.’ So, the Legislative Matters Committee will be put into motion and then we will have a final vote at a special meeting on February 4th.”
For HPR News, I’m Wayne Yoshioka.
