Starting Tuesday, many candidates seeking political office in Hawaii can begin graduating nomination documents so long as the races are not affected by an ongoing legal challenge across legislative and congressional districts.
However, candidates seeking one of the 76 seats in the legislature — the 25 seats in the Senate and the 51 in the House of Representatives — cannot submit their nomination papers until the Hawaii Supreme Court resolves a legal dispute between a group of residents and the Hawaii Redistribution Commission. The same applies to the 1st and 2nd congressional districts.
But candidates for U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs can submit all campaign papers to the state Office of Elections, according to the Hawaii Office of Elections on Monday. The deadline for submissions is June 7th and primary school is August 13th.
Candidates for county offices, such as the mayors of Maui and Kauai and council members for each county, can also begin collecting paperwork starting Tuesday. The City and County of Honolulu are up for 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th even seats this year.
But things are on hold for the Legislature and the US House of Representatives. That’s because residents of Oahu, Maui, and Big Island claim that the law maps produced by the Redistribution Commission do not meet criteria set forth in the state constitution and state statutes.
The court gave the state until Thursday to file a response to the citizen motion, but later extended it to March 11.
The Redistribution Commission needs time to confer with its lawyers and may do so at a meeting tentatively scheduled for March 7 or 8, according to a court statement filed Friday by Assistant Attorney General Lori Tanigawa became.
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