Election Night: City Hall and visitors waited - and waited - for results

November 12, 2014
Santa Paula News

By Peggy Kelly 

Santa Paula Times 

Election Night at City Hall saw several dozen visitors and lots of impatience as a glitch caused first returns to be delayed more than an hour and the second count not coming in until after 1 a.m. 

But on the local level, said Deputy City Clerk Lucy Blanco, things went well.

Deputy City Clerk Lucy Blanco and former City Clerk Josie Herrera, working on contract, took care of the election business that included plenty of emails, phone calls and texts asking when the first votes - the result of ballots mailed early to the Ventura County Elections Division office - would be released.

Overall, though, “It went well,” said Blanco, who noted City Clerk Judy Rice was just as impatient as those waiting to hear the results of the highly contested City Council race and the fate of Measure F, the 1 percent public safety sales tax.

All of Santa Paula’s ballot boxes were delivered to City Hall within an hour of the polls closing at 8 p.m. but then there was a wait for Ventura County Deputies to pick up the boxes and deliver them to the county.

Mayor Rick Cook, Debbie Johnson and former Mayor Don Johnson, Ray Luna also a former mayor and his son Derek Luna and others came by City Hall.

Said Blanco, City Council candidate “Jenny Crosswhite in with some of her supporters as well... we had some nice company while we waited,” and snacks for the Election Night nervous munchies.

And the snacks were needed: “There were some issues with the county, their website was not working but they were being as helpful as possible as people kept calling us, sending emails, texting and coming in,” to learn of results.

The oversized dry erase board was bare until, “After 9 p.m. when we started getting numbers up there... we agreed we were going to call it a night at about 11 p.m.,” if no more results were released and Blanco said that’s exactly what they did.

Blanco said she was pleased by the number of vote by mail registrants who took advantage of the Blue Box in City Hall lobby in the weeks leading up to the November 4 General Election.

The Santa Paula Blue Box was well used: “We had probably 40 votes in it in one week,” said Blanco. 

According to Tracy Saucedo, Ventura County assistant registrar of voters, initially there was “A very rough estimate of 43,000 vote-by-mail ballots and approximately 9,500 provisional ballots,” that remained to be counted following the election.

“Our plan,” Saucedo said November 5, “is to update on Friday and Tuesdays, but since Veterans Day is Tuesday,” November 11, “we’ll update Wednesday (November 12) that week.”

There has been a rising trend of voters dropping off their ballots on Election Day, which they can do at any polling place but these same ballots are not likely to be counted that same day. Ballots that are damaged and provisional ballots require more detailed verification.

Saucedo said the first results, “Literally what was counted,” and released early on the morning of November 5 showed of the 433,064 registered voters in Ventura County, 153,442 cast ballots for a turnout of 35.43 percent.

The second release of ballots shown Friday, November 7 showed that 166,686 ballots - an additional 13,244 - were cast for a turnout of 38.49 percent. 

Crosswhite, John Procter and Ginger Gherardi were elected to the council ousting two-term incumbents Ralph Fernandez and Bob Gonzales; John Demers finished last.

Measure F, which required 67 percent of the vote, failed.





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