A new wrinkle has appeared in Santa Barbara’s ongoing City Council elections; the city will be sending the ballots — which will determine who will represent the Eastside and Mesa neighborhoods in city government — to Norwalk in Los Angeles County to be counted. After the Tuesday, November 5 vote closes, the 125-mile lag could delay knowing the winners and losers until the following Friday.
The city contracted with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office to count its ballots two hours away because Santa Barbara County has no election setup this November and because the company it had previously used had gone out of business, said Sarah Gorman, who oversees city elections and who noted the issue was previously discussed before the council. It’s a loss to candidates, supporters, and lurking journalists who have watched tubs full of ballots being counted in plain view in council chambers on Election Night. The ballot results that night were usually high enough to give some certainty of the final outcome.
As of Wednesday, 1,404 ballots had been processed by City Hall, Gorman said, with about two weeks to go. That’s compared to the 16,881 of total ballots that were mailed to District 1 and 2 voters for the November 5 City Council election.