Over 30,000 people had voted as of Tuesday in the special City Council District 4 election between Trevor Ozawa and Tommy Waters to represent East Honolulu.

That’s more ballots cast than for any other special election in the county’s history, said city elections spokesman Rex Quidilla.

It’s also approaching the 36,694 voters who cast ballots for Ozawa and Waters in last November’s election.

Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat

Ozawa outpolled Waters by 22 votes, but the Hawaii Supreme Court invalidated the election, ruling that election officials counted mail ballots that arrived too late.

City election officials plan to avoid that problem by picking up the last batch of mail ballots from the post office at 5:30 p.m. Saturday. Quidilla says that the elections office will enlist two state election officials to confirm that the pickup occurs before 6 p.m.

Mail-in ballots were sent to 63,000 voters. As of Tuesday evening, Honolulu’s elections office had received 29,785 completed ballots.

Honolulu Hale is the only designated walk-in polling place and just 301 people had voted in person as of Tuesday. It will be open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.

Final results are expected by about 10 p.m. Saturday, Quidilla said.

The race between Ozawa and Waters is for the City Council seat representing an area stretching from Hawaii Kai to Kewalo Basin. Ozawa beat Waters by 41 votes in 2014 and served as a councilman for four years.

The race is nonpartisan but has gotten ugly with both candidates accusing the other of misleading voters.

Waters has raised far more money than Ozawa this year and is backed by AiKea, the political arm of Unite Here Local 5, a union representing service workers. AiKea raised $170,000 in support of Waters, according to the latest available campaign data.

Civil Beat has published Q&A’s for both candidates. Read Ozawa’s by clicking here, and Waters’ by clicking here.