The OC Registrar of Voters counted 14,765 additional ballots today and updated the vote total at 5:00 p.m.:
Tom Tait and Kris Murray remain locks for re-election, and Tait Slate candidate James Vanderbilt still appears headed toward being sworn in as an Anaheim City Council member in a month. Councilwoman Gail Eastman picked up 40 votes and narrowed Vanderbilt’s lead from 297 to 257 votes. 14,765 ballots were counted today, and the combined mayoral vote increased by 420 – meaning 2.8% of those were from Anaheim. A number of those voters either bullet voted for council or left that part blank, since the combined council vote total increased by 748. ,
There are still 135,540 uncounted ballots remaining countywide. We have no way of knowing what cities those are from – although I’ve heard insider speculation they’re disproportionately from the SD34 and AD65 – but let’s suppose for the sake of discussion that the 2.8 percentage holds and 3,795 of the remaining uncounted ballots are from Anaheim. It’s still very unlikely Eastman will be able make up the 257 vote deficit.
Anaheim voter turnout was shockingly low compared to 2010, when 61,237 ballots were cast in the mayoral contest versus only 33,243 (so far) in this election. While Tait’s percentage of the vote was virtually the same both years — 54.4% in 2010 versus 54.1% this year — his only received slightly more than half as many votes: 17,968 compared to 33,340 in 2010.
This was reflected in the council votes. Kris Murray finished second in 2010 with 17,81 votes, and was the top vote-getter this year with 12,332 votes. Not as dramatic a drop as in the mayoral race, but still significant.
The vote totals the ballot measure tracked the mayoral totals; 32,889 cast in the Measure L contest. Think about that: Anaheim has 345,000 residents and 126,024 registered voters – and 6.5% of the city’s population (22,455) just decided the size of and method for electing the city council that will govern the other 93.5%. When turnout is that low, it’s more like a polling sample than an election.
A lot of the turnout difference can probably be attributed to the lack of competitive races at the top of the ballot, as opposed to 2010 when Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown were squaring off.
well I got one out of two. Tait is back, but the horrendous choice of Vanderbilt may be elected. He does not have the capacity or the skills to work as a council member. He does not make decisions and usually is led like a lamb.
“He does not make decisions and usually is led like a lamb.”
That’s why Tait recruited him. He wants a rubber-stamping yes-man on the dais with him.
And clearly Tait has rubber stamping yes man running the editorial pages of the Register. That paper isn’t worth lining bird cages anymore.
Congratulations Mayor Tait, you must be proud to preside over a city where gang members murder 9 year old innocent girls.
and dont forget chase the angels out of town and sale the land there where the stadium sits to disney
Lewis Consulting Group is a big winner from Tuesday. They now have two campaign clients on the Anaheim City Council: Tom Tait and James Vanderbilt. It’s OK to be a politically-connected business doing business with the city as long as you have Tait’s campaign consultant doing your lobbying.
i hope the council have enough power to get angels back to table and get a new lease done if the mayor chases them away we should start a recall him i have move to anaheim in 1955 long before mayor tait 1st year disney opened