Running for office in Honolulu County, Hawaii.

The short version.

Start with the calendar, because Hawaii runs one unlike anywhere else. Nomination papers for the 2026 county elections were due at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, and that window is shut. Hawaii's primary is held on a SATURDAY rather than a Tuesday, it was Saturday, August 8, 2026, and it has already happened. And Hawaii does not allow write-in voting for any office, so there is no back door onto the November ballot the way there is in most states. What that leaves is what this page is actually about: the general election on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and the next county filing window, which opens in February 2028.

The second thing to know is that Hawaii's four counties are not four versions of one template. They elect different offices, on different term lengths, and each county charter sets a different rule for when a primary result ends a race outright. Hawaii County councilmembers serve two years and Honolulu's serve four. Kauai elects its entire council at large with no districts at all. Maui does not elect a prosecuting attorney, because the mayor appoints one. Any page that gives you 'mayor, council, prosecutor' for every Hawaii county is wrong in at least two places, and this set of guides is built county by county for that reason.

This page covers that for Honolulu County and points you at your local election office for anything specific to your county. It is not legal advice; the official rules live with your election office and the Hawaii Office of Elections.

Honolulu County by the numbers.

Hawaii election calendar (2026).

These are the statewide dates from the Office of Elections. County contests ride exactly the same calendar as everything else in Hawaii: one filing deadline, one primary, one general, no separate local cycle.

• Mon Feb 2, 2026Applications for nomination papers opened. The first day a 2026 candidate could pick up a nomination paper, in person or through the Office of Elections' online Candidate System.
• Tue Jun 2, 2026, 4:30 p.m.FILING DEADLINE for the 2026 election -- CLOSED. HRS sec. 12-6(a) fixes it at 4:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday in June, not at a count of days before the primary. County candidates file with their County Elections Division.
• Tue Jun 9, 2026, 4:30 p.m.Deadline to object to a nomination paper -- CLOSED (HRS sec. 12-8).
• SATURDAY Aug 8, 2026PRIMARY ELECTION -- ALREADY HELD. HRS sec. 12-2 sets it on the second Saturday of August in every even-numbered year. Hawaii is the state that votes its primary on a Saturday.
• Fri Sep 4, 2026, 4:30 p.m.STILL OPEN, but a state seat rather than a county one: filing closes for the State Senate District 18 vacancy election, held with the November 3 general. The fee is 250 dollars and NO signatures are required.
• Fri Oct 16, 2026General election ballots are mailed. Hawaii has voted by mail since 2020 and every registered voter is sent a ballot without asking.
• Tue Oct 20 - Tue Nov 3, 2026Voter service centers open, excluding Sundays. Accessible voting, in-person voting and SAME-DAY registration, run by the County Elections Divisions.
• Mon Oct 26, 2026Deadline for a paper voter registration application to reach your County Elections Division. Online registration stays open, and same-day registration is available at any voter service center.
• Tue Oct 27, 2026Deadline to ask for your ballot to be sent to an alternate address.
• Tue Nov 3, 2026GENERAL ELECTION. Ballots must be RECEIVED by your County Elections Division by 7:00 p.m. A postmark is not enough.
• February 2028The next county filing window opens. County offices in Hawaii appear on even-year ballots only; there is no odd-year local election here.

Two warnings worth more than the rest of this section. Do not trust a source that puts Hawaii's primary on a Tuesday, and do not trust one that states the filing deadline as a number of days before the primary, because HRS sec. 12-6(a) fixes it on the first Tuesday in June whatever the primary date is. And because Hawaii has no write-in voting, nothing here is a route onto the 2026 ballot now that June 2 has passed. Dates verified against the Office of Elections on August 15, 2026.

Offices on the ballot in Honolulu County.

County offices and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are nonpartisan special contests in Hawaii. The Office of Elections says so in terms in the 2026 Candidate's Manual: all candidates for these contests run as nonpartisan candidates. The nonpartisanship itself comes from each county's own charter rather than from the state statutes, which is why it arrived at different dates in different counties. Below is what is on this county's ballot, followed by the seats everyone in Hawaii votes on.

• Councilmember, districts II, IV, VI and VIII -- four of the nine seats, on FOUR-year terms running January 2027 to January 2031. Honolulu is the only Hawaii county whose councilmembers serve four years and the only one that staggers them, so half the council is never on a ballot with the other half.
• Two of those four seats were settled on August 8 and are not on the November ballot. City and County of Honolulu Charter Article XIII, Section 13-116 sets a three-branch rule: one candidate for a seat and the seat goes on the PRIMARY ballot and is decided there; exactly two candidates and it skips the primary and appears only on the GENERAL ballot; three or more and a majority of the votes cast in the primary, excluding blanks and overvotes, wins outright while anything less sends the top two to November.
• Applying that rule to the primary summary as published on August 15, 2026: districts II and VIII each drew a single candidate and were decided in August. District IV drew four candidates and nobody reached a majority, so its top two are on the November 3 ballot. District VI did not appear on the primary ballot at all, which under the charter rule means exactly two candidates filed for it, and it is decided in November.
• NOT on the 2026 ballot in Honolulu -- MAYOR, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY and council districts I, III, V, VII and IX. All seven are next up in 2028.
• What it takes to run for the council here: 15 signatures from registered voters of the council district you are running in; a 250 dollar filing fee that drops to 25 dollars with the campaign-expenditure-limit affidavit filed first; and residence and voter registration in that district.
• Section 3-8.4 of the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu requires every candidate for city and county elective office, incumbents included, to file a financial disclosure statement with the Clerk's Office within 10 working days after the filing deadline, and elected officials to file again within 20 working days of taking the oath and by January 31 each year after that.

Statewide and legislative seats covering Honolulu County are on the same ballot:

• Governor and Lieutenant Governor -- on the November 3, 2026 ballot, four-year terms. They are nominated separately in the primary and elected together at the general. The incumbent Governor was elected in 2022.
• State Senator -- 15 of the 25 seats in 2026: districts 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 25. Four-year terms, except districts 18 and 19, which carry a two-year term because they fill an original term that expires November 7, 2028.
• State Representative -- all 51 seats, two-year terms, on every even-year ballot.
• U.S. Representative -- both Hawaii seats, districts I and II, two-year terms.
• Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee -- five of the nine seats in 2026: three at-large, one Maui resident seat and one Oahu resident seat, on four-year terms. Nonpartisan, and open to every registered voter.

Two things this list deliberately leaves out. It does not repeat your county's own offices, because those differ in every county and are listed above. And it does not cover Kalawao. Hawaii has five counties on paper, but HRS sec. 326-35 provides that there shall be no county officer in the county other than a sheriff, who is appointed by the Department of Health and must be a patient resident of the Kalaupapa settlement, and HRS sec. 326-34(b) puts the county under the Department of Health's jurisdiction and control. Kalawao elects nobody, appears on no ballot and has no candidate guide here, which is why these guides cover four counties rather than five. One practical point on the primary: Hawaii's primary ballot is a single-party ballot, but the nonpartisan county contests on it are open to every voter regardless of which party's ballot they chose.

How to get on the ballot.

Hawaii is cheap to enter and unusually light on signatures. Every county office on every island takes the same 15 signatures, and the filing fee drops by ninety per cent if you file one affidavit first. The barrier here is the calendar, not the paperwork.

Nomination papers -- the only route onto a Hawaii ballot, and it closed at 4:30 p.m. on June 2, 2026.

There is one path in Hawaii and everybody uses it. You apply for a nomination paper, gather signatures, pay a fee and file, all with the same office. County candidates deal with their County Elections Division throughout; the state Office of Elections handles federal and state candidates and, on the neighbour islands, shares counters with the county.

The filing fee, and the affidavit that cuts it by ninety per cent.

HRS sec. 12-6(c) sets the fee by office and sec. 12-6(e) discounts it for candidates who agree to a voluntary spending limit. The discount is the single best-value piece of paperwork in Hawaii politics and a lot of candidates miss it because the timing is strict.

There is no write-in route in Hawaii. None, for any office.

This is the difference between Hawaii and almost every other state whose filing deadline has passed. Hawaii does not permit write-in voting, the United States Supreme Court upheld the ban in Burdick v. Takushi in 1992, and it remains the law. The phrase does not appear anywhere in the Office of Elections' 2026 Candidate's Manual. If you missed June 2, 2026, no piece of paper puts you on the November ballot, and any guide that offers you one is describing a different state. The honest answer for a 2026 county race is to work the general election you are already in, or to plan for February 2028.

One door in Hawaii is genuinely still open, and it is a state seat.

The State Senate District 18 vacancy election is on the November 3, 2026 ballot and filing for it runs to 4:30 p.m. on Friday, September 4, 2026. The fee is 250 dollars and NO signatures are required at all, which makes it the lowest-friction ballot access in the state this year. District 18 sits on Oahu, the winner serves the balance of a term expiring November 7, 2028, and this is a State Senate seat rather than a county office. Confirm the details with the Office of Elections before you rely on them.

Statutory references: HRS sec. 12-6(a) · HRS sec. 12-2 · HRS sec. 12-6(c), (e), (f) · HRS sec. 12-8 · HRS sec. 11-423 and 11-426 · HRS sec. 11-14 and 11-97 · HAR sec. 3-177-160 · Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992) · HRS sec. 326-34 and 326-35. Fees and signature counts change; confirm before you file.

The City and County of Honolulu, Office of the City Clerk, Elections Division.

In Hawaii the county clerk's elections division is two things at once, which is why this address matters twice. It issues and accepts your nomination paper, and it is also the office that sells the county voter register. There is no statewide voter list to buy in this state, so the county clerk is the only door to both.

Honolulu is a consolidated city and county: the island of Oahu is one government, and roughly seven in ten of Hawaii's registered voters live in it. There is no separate city council and county council, the nine-member body is both, and its districts are numbered in Roman numerals rather than digits, which is the small detail that most often sends people to the wrong district page. It is also the one county whose candidates file with a city clerk rather than a county clerk, and the one county where the state Office of Elections does not share a filing counter.

Contact details verified 2026-08-15. Official statewide sources: Hawaii Office of Elections · 2026 Candidate's Manual (PDF) · Contest schedule: which offices are up in 2026 and 2028 · County Elections Divisions · Election results, including the August 8, 2026 primary · Campaign Spending Commission.

Common questions.

After you qualify: the field operation.

Three things about Hawaii change how a campaign is run here. First, it is an all-mail state and has been since 2020. Every registered voter is sent a ballot, general election ballots go out on October 16, 2026, and they must be RECEIVED by 7:00 p.m. on November 3, not postmarked. That pulls the peak of a persuasion campaign forward by about three weeks and makes the fortnight after the ballots land the whole game. Voter service centers open on October 20 and run to election day excluding Sundays, with same-day registration, so a voter you find late is not lost. Second, the voter register you can buy carries no telephone number, no e-mail address and no date of birth, because HAR sec. 3-177-160(c) excludes all three. Hawaii is an address-and-door file, and a campaign built on phone banking or texting will not get off the ground on county data alone. Third, geography is real: three of the four counties are made of more than one island, and Maui County votes every council seat county-wide across open water. Walk lists here have to be planned around ferries and flights, not just drive times.

That is the part Motion51 was built for. You scope your district, cut turf, and send volunteers out with a phone instead of a clipboard. It works offline, so canvassing does not stop where the cell signal does, and every door is logged with a timestamp for your records. Our For Candidates page walks through what that looks like.

Counties next to Honolulu.

Running in a district that crosses a county line? Each of these has its own guide.

See all Hawaii counties →