Tonight, the City of Westlake Village has three candidates running for the office of City Council Member: two incumbents, and one challenger. Mayor Ned Davis, Councilmember Philippa Klessig and former Councilmember Chris Mann ran for the two seats open on the City Council.
The vote for City Council is close enough that the unofficial results could change, but at this point in time, the vote results stand a decent chance of reflecting the final vote. Tonight, the results are as follows:
30.0% for Klessig
28.6% for Mann
41.4% for Davis
49.2% Yes on Measure K (needs 2/3 votes to pass)
There are over 100 votes remaining to count. They are provisional ballots, and vote by mail ballots received today. Both of these need to be verified as countable votes before they are counted. This verification will happen tomorrow, and the canvassing will start at 2pm Wed when the balance of the votes are counted. 74 of the 100 votes to count are provisional ballots. Typically, these are things like someone voting at a different polling place than they are registered at, or some other issue.
The final vote is not certified for several days if not a couple of weeks. This was an incredibly close vote — amongst the closest that Westlake Village has seen, and close enough that it’s important to see the certified votes and provisional votes.
Additional Details
The City of Westlake Village counts its own votes under the supervision of the City’s Election Official Beth Schott. Starting immediately after the polls close, they start with the absentee ballots. This year, 31% of the voters in Westlake Village opted to vote by mail — about double what it has been in the past. In all 858 actually voted by mail (although some may choose to vote in person even if originally registered as absentee ballot).
The vote by mail results, which are different than the overall results, showed are the first indication of results:
30.5% for Klessig
29.2% for Mann
40.4% for Davis
49.2% Yes on Measure K
Once the precinct captains have closed the polls, completed the paperwork, and process, they bring the ballots to City Hall to be counted by the election staff using an automated machine that is tested for both logic and accuracy before and after the vote count.
The “Ballot Receiving Board” inspects the boxes as they come in from the precincts.
The “Ballot Inspection Board” makes sure that the ballots are not damaged or otherwise out of form that would keep them from being counted by the automated counting machine. For example, if the ballot was marked with an “x” instead of a filled in circle, it would not be counted by the machine properly. This is the new version of ballots designed to avoid the “hanging chad” problem of years past.
The “Ballot Storage Board” literally watches the boxes of ballots to make sure they are safe until they are sealed and sent to lock and key storage.