Hawaii Supreme Court orders new election in tied House race

The two Republicans locked in a 842-842 tie will now face each other again in the general election, with the winner taking the seat outright since no Democrat ran in the race.

by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, September 4, 2026

HONOLULU (CN) — The Hawaii Supreme Court on Friday threw out the results of a tied Republican primary for a Leeward Oahu state House seat, ordering voters to settle the race on the November ballot instead.

“Because no candidate was validly nominated, the primary is not pau,” Justice Todd Eddins wrote, using the Hawaiian word for complete. “The remedy is to let the voters finish it.”

The ruling unwinds the Aug. 15 drawing in which Chief Election Officer Scott Nago pulled Sheila Medeiros’ name from a woven lauhala basket to break her 842-842 tie with state Representative Kanani Souza for House District 43.

Justice Lisa Ginoza wrote in a separate opinion that the court found two problems, either one enough to void the result.

The first was two ballots cast by District 40 voters who were mistakenly issued District 43 ballots and folded into the count with no way to trace how they voted. The court rejected the state’s argument that Souza had to prove which way those ballots broke.

“A tie must be real before it can be broken. Two ballots from outside the district put this one in doubt,” Eddins his opinion joined by Acting Chief Justice Sabrina McKenna.

The justices held that in an ordinary contest, a challenger has to show enough tainted votes to overcome her opponent’s lead. But a tie has no lead to overcome, so any unaccounted-for ballot is enough to unsettle it.

They also put the burden of proving the two ballots were validly cast on the state, not on Souza, relying on a Hawaii statute that treats official election records as presumptive evidence.

“The margin is the filter,” they wrote.

The court also found the lauhala-box method itself was unlawful. Nago testified he modeled the drawing on the office’s existing process for setting party order on the ballot and built it before either 2026 race had actually tied.

That, the court found, made it a “rule” under Hawaii’s administrative procedures law, one adopted without the public notice and hearing the law requires, and therefore invalid. The court rejected the state’s argument that a one-time drawing between two named candidates was merely a case-specific decision rather than a rule.

The court also turned aside Funakoshi v. King, a 1982 precedent the state relied on to argue justices simply lack the power to invalidate a primary and order a new one. Funakoshi addressed a race that already had a valid winner, they wrote, while this primary produced none at all.

The court did not reach Souza’s three remaining claims, including a constitutional challenge to the tie-breaking statute.

They also noted that the county’s own reconciliation report, not the state’s, was what caught the discrepancy in the first place, tracing it to two voters at a Kapolei service center who were handed the wrong precinct’s ballots.

“The right to vote means little if the result cannot be trusted. Here it could not. So the voters will settle it,” they said.

Because both candidates are Republicans and there was no Democratic primary for the seat, the winner will be deemed elected under the Hawaii Constitution’s unopposed-candidate provision, taking office the same day rather than waiting for a formal swearing-in.

As Nago testified at last week’s hearing, ballots for the Nov. 3 general election were already due to be printed by Sept. 11, so the Office of Elections will need to add the District 43 contest to that ballot quickly for every registered voter in the district, not just the Republicans who took part in the August primary.

Thomas Otake represented Souza. Kendall Moser, with Skyler Cruz and Aaron Schulaner, represented Nago and the state Office of Elections. Duane Pang represented the city defendants. Medeiros represented herself.

Representatives for Medeiros, Souza and Nago did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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(Clue: By magic, they have changed a Republican Primary into a General Election.)

PDF: Decision

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