LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Los Angeles County released its first post-election update of results from Tuesday’s statewide primary Friday, adding more than 169,000 ballots to the overall total counted.
On Wednesday, the day after the election, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan estimated that 400,000 vote-by-mail ballots still needed to be tallied, along with 680 conditional voter-registration ballots, 105 provisional ballots and 300 other miscellaneous ballots.
The update released Friday incorporated 169,338 of those ballots — 168,566 vote-by-mail ballots and 772 in-person votes, according to Logan’s office.
The registrar’s office will continue to accept ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received by Tuesday.
In Los Angeles city races, Friday’s update resulted in some minor changes.
In the race to represent City Council District 13 — which includes the neighborhoods of Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Atwater Village — labor organizer Hugo Soto-Martinez overtook the incumbent, Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, by 41 votes. Both candidates were already leading the rest of the field and are expected to compete in a November runoff.
Civil rights attorney Faisal Gill and federal prosecutor Marina Torres were also nearly tied with 20.45% and 20.41% of the vote in the city attorney’s race but two other candidates were trailing close behind: financial law attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto (19.35%) and Deputy City Attorney Richard Kim (19.06%). That race will also result in a runoff.
The updated results added to former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry’s lead over Culver City Mayor Daniel W. Lee in their battle to take on Sen. Sydney Kamlager in the Nov. 8 general election for the 37th Congressional District seat which was vacated by Rep. Karen Bass to run for mayor.
Going into Friday, Perry had a 1,085-vote lead over Lee, but that margin expanded to 1,250 when updated results were released. All three candidates are Democrats.
Nonprofit director/businesswoman Tina Simone McKinnor added 121 votes to her lead over Lawndale Mayor Robert Pullen-Miles in the 62nd Assembly District special election to pull 1,154 votes ahead of her fellow Democrat.
The next update will be released Tuesday, Logan said.
The closest statewide race is for state superintendent of public instruction, where software architect George Yang increased his lead in the race for second place to 2,124 votes over Lance Ray Christensen, the vice president, education policy and government affairs of California Policy Center, which bills itself as an educational nonprofit organization working for the prosperity of all Californians by eliminating public-sector barriers to freedom.
Yang held a 422-vote lead over teacher Ainye E. Long when Friday’s vote count started. Long dropped to fourth Friday, 3,507 votes behind Yang. The second-place finisher in the nonpartisan race will face incumbent Tony K. Thurmond in November.
Republican Robert Howell, a cybersecurity equipment manufacturer, saw his lead over Democratic Assemblyman Marc Levine in the race for second for insurance commissioner decrease to 10,947 votes — down from 38,931 — in the race to face incumbent Democrat Ricardo Lara.
In the attorney general’s race, former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Nathan Hochman extended his lead over fellow Republican Eric Early, an attorney and business owner, to 70,295 votes after leading by 66,479 at the start of Friday’s vote count. The second-place finisher will face appointed Democratic incumbent Rob Bonta in November.
There were an estimated 2.766 million unprocessed ballots statewide following the election and 2.625 million Friday, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.