LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Registrar of Voters Office has completed counting the ballots from the Nov. 4 general election and is preparing to take the final results to the Board of Supervisors.
Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley released the semifinal official results, which includes all of the votes cast in the election – absentee, precinct and provisional – as she nears completion of the official election canvass.
Although all of the ballots have been counted, Fridley said she will not certify the results of the election and prepare the official statement of votes until Monday.
The official statement of votes will include the breakdown of all of the votes cast by voting precinct and by districts – congressional, supervisorial, each city and unincorporated – according to Fridley.
Fridley anticipates taking the certified results to the Board of Supervisors at its regular meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 9.
Newly elected county officials will take office in the first week of January, while the new council members in the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport will be sworn in and seated in December.
Among the most notable pieces of data revealed in the updated results is voter turnout.
Preliminary results put voter turnout at 37.6 percent. However, the semifinal count puts total turnout at 53.9 percent. That’s down from midterm election results reported in November 2010, 66 percent, and November 2006, 62.6 percent.
Fridley’s updated numbers also gave the total turnout for voting in the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport, which both had council seats on the ballot.
In Clearlake, where there are 6,376 registered voters, voter turnout was at 44.6 percent, while in Lakeport, 59 percent of the city’s 2,575 registered voters participated, based on Fridley’s report.
There were minor changes in percentages in the races, but all of the results reported preliminarily remain accurate.
In the case of the Lakeport City Council race, the semifinal count results broke the percentage tie between top finishers Mireya Gehring Turner and Stacey Mattina.
Turner had led Mattina with just one vote, putting them in a statistical dead heat. The updated count had Turner pulling ahead of Mattina with a total of three more votes.
The following are the semifinal vote counts for all races.
– Assessor-recorder: Richard Ford, 8,814 votes, 56.1 percent; Sorhna Li Jordan, 6,895 votes, 43.9 percent.
– Clearlake City Council (top two finishers win seats): Bruno Sabatier, 1,199 votes, 26.1 percent; Russell Perdock, 906 votes, 19.8 percent; Joey Luiz, 792 votes, 17.3 percent; Andre Williams, 701 votes, 15.3 percent; Quincy Jackson, 421 votes, 9.2 percent; Michael Pesonen, 333 votes, 7.3 percent; Michael Walton, 235 votes, 5.1 percent.
– Lakeport City Council (top two finishers win seats): Mireya Gehring Turner, 782 votes, 37.6 percent; Stacey Mattina, 779 votes, 37.4 percent; Michael Balentine, 520 votes, 25 percent.
– Supervisor, District 2: Jeff Smith, 1,241 votes, 54.5 percent; Jeri Spittler, 1,038 votes, 45.5 percent.
– Supervisor, District 3: Jim Steele, 1,959 votes, 55.8 percent; John Brosnan, 1,554 votes, 44.2 percent.
– Measure O, Medical Marijuana Control Act (needed simple majority to pass): yes, 6,674 votes, 38.6 percent; no, 10,606 votes, 61.4 percent.
– Measure P, Freedom To Garden Human Rights Restoration Act Of 2014 (needed simple majority to pass): yes, 5,904 votes, 34.3 percent; no, 11,326 votes, 65.7 percent.
– Measure R, half-cent sales tax proposal for code enforcement in the city of Clearlake (needed supermajority of 66.7 percent to pass): yes, 1,412 votes, 53.4 percent; no, 1,231 votes, 46.6 percent.
– Measure S, “Healthy Lake” half-cent county sales tax measure (needed supermajority of 66.7 percent to pass): yes, 11,037 votes, 63.6 percent; no, 6,308 votes, 36.4 percent.
– Measure T, Lakeport Unified School District bond measure (needed simple majority to pass): yes, 2,203 votes, 65.9 percent; no, 1,138 votes, 34.1 percent.
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