The vote count, tied up for weeks because of legal challenges, had been expected to be released this morning by the Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council.
But the court, acting on a motion by Big Island rancher Harold Rice to stop the vote, essentially said it needed time to consider the last-minute appeal, state deputy attorney general Winfred Pong said this morning.
In a one-sentence fax to state officials, the appeals court said a ruling by U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Friday, "denying appellant's motion for a preliminary injunction, is temporarily stayed."
"My sense is that they just need more time to review papers and not make a rash decision," Pong said.
"That decision may be made tomorrow or a week from now."
Attorney Jon Van Dyke, representing members of the elections council, said he expected the appeals court to make a decision within the next few days. However, he said every day gets more crucial, since the council is set to disband at the end of the year.
On hearing of the continued delay, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Kina'u Boyd Kamalii said, "I'm so angry that we could not get the vote out. This was a vote strictly for Hawaiians."
Kamalii said Rice and other non-Hawaiians are "trying again to take away the rights of native Hawaiians as they did" when they overthrew Hawaii's last reigning monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani, in 1893.
Rice had challenged the constitutionality of the balloting, saying it should not have been limited to native Hawaiians.
Just last Friday, members of the elections council were celebrating Ezra's ruling that the state was within its constitutional right in setting up and paying for the mail-in vote, held between July 1 and Aug. 15. About 80,000 people of Hawaiian ancestry were sent ballots asking whether they should elect delegates to propose a native Hawaiian government.
Supporters consider the vote a crucial first step toward determining some form of Hawaiian sovereignty.
Results of the balloting were sealed pending resolution of Rice's lawsuit and one filed by a group that included Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Billie Beamer and three others.
Ezra's ruling covered both suits.