Primary Election Ballot
Hawaii is the only state that holds its statewide primary election on a Saturday. This year, the primary is Aug. 13.
Two years ago Hawaii implemented a statewide mail-in balloting system, which helped contribute to a significant voter turnout. Experts predict voting by mail will result in a healthy turnout this year as well.
Voters can still vote in person, if they choose. There will be dozens of voter service centers and places of deposit around the state to provide accessible, in-person voting, same-day voter registration and collection of voted ballots.
The voting service centers will be open 10 days before the primary and until 7 p.m. on election day — the deadline for all completed ballots to be received by County Elections Divisions in order to be counted.
At the federal level, one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats is up this year along with both seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At the state level, there are races for governor and lieutenant governor. Because of reapportionment, every legislative seat is up, too — all 51 in the state House of Representatives and 25 state Senate seats.
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is also a statewide race, and all registered voters may vote for all board of trustee candidates on the ballot. Six of the nine OHA seats are up this year: three at-large seats and one resident seat each for Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island.
At the county level, four of the nine Honolulu City Council seats — Districts 2, 4, 6 and 8 — are up. There are races for Maui County mayor, Kauai County mayor and all county council seats in Maui, Kauai and Hawaii counties.
In Hawaii, many statewide and legislative races are effectively decided in the primary because of the overwhelming dominance of the Democratic Party. So whichever Democrat wins the primary often goes on to prevail in the general election. Candidates who win their primaries and face no general election opponent are deemed to have won the office.
At the county level, however, candidates for councils and mayor need to earn 50% of the vote plus 1 in order to win outright. If no candidate reaches that threshold, the top two candidates in those races face a runoff in the Nov. 8 general election. The same runoff requirements apply to OHA races.
In races for the Honolulu City Council, the Maui County Council and OHA, if there are only two candidates who file to run in the primary, those races will actually be held in the general. That is not the case, however, for the Hawaii County Council and the Kauai County Council.
County-level races as well as the contest for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are nonpartisan. Candidates are not designated as Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians or any other affiliation. OHA races with only two candidates won’t appear on the primary ballot but will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
The races for Congress, governor and lieutenant governor and the Hawaii Legislature are partisan races. Hawaii has six recognized political parties: the Democratic Party of Hawaii, the Green Party of Hawaii, the Constitution Party of Hawaii, the Aloha Aina Party, the Libertarian Party of Hawaii and the Hawaii Republican Party. In the primary, voters must select only one party’s ballot.
Hawaii also allows candidates to run as nonpartisans if they choose not to join a political party. But nonpartisan candidates rarely progress past the primary election because state law requires them to get at least 10% of the total votes cast in the primary or as many votes as the winning partisan candidate who got the least number of votes.
Some primary candidates have been active for months, including raising money from contributors. You can study campaign finance reports for each candidate at the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission website. The next campaign reports for candidates are due July 14, and they cover the period Jan. 1 or April 26 through June 30.
You can read all of Civil Beat’s coverage of the 2022 elections here.
And get more information about this year’s elections, candidates and campaigns in our Hawaii Elections Guide 2022. Check back frequently. We’ll also be including links to information on candidates and where they stand on important issues.
We’ve sent out candidate questionnaires in statewide and legislative races as well as the county races throughout the islands. We’ll link to those from this page as they come in.
Hawaii Primary Election 2022 Candidates
- D = Democrat
- R = Republican
- L = Libertarian
- G = Green Party
- C = Constitution
- A = Aloha Aina
- N = Nonpartisan
- = Nonpartisan Special
