Tech issues aside, Solano voting goes smoothly

Incumbent Suisun City council candidate Mike Segala takes down his last campaign sign on Wednesday morning at Sunset Avenue and East Travis Boulevard. Segala was elected to another term on the council. (Brad Zweerink/Daily Republic)

FAIRFIELD — While most election races in Solano County are decided, there are still thousands of votes to count.

As of Wednesday afternoon, there were still 21,019 vote-by-mail ballots that needed to be processed. That will likely be done by 5 p.m. Friday, said John Gardner, deputy registrar of voters.

There are also 14,113 provisional ballots to be sorted through and verified, Gardner said. That number is larger than past years and Gardner didn’t have a concrete answer as to exactly why. One explanation may be the fact that the state’s website allowed people to register after the deadline, pushing that registration to next year.

Gardner said many who did this online were given a receipt they mistook for a current registration. He said the county shut its online registration down, however it linked to the state site. It is unknown how many of the provisional ballots were related to this issue.

He also said redistricting in several races, along with a shuffling and addition of polling places, may have added to the number of provisional ballots issued there.

“Without digging into them, it’s speculation. It will be interesting,” Gardner said. “We had to bump people around a lot. Is it 14,000 worth? I can’t imagine all that is.”

Another technical hiccup delayed results and frustrated many of the party-goers waiting for them. Gardner said his side of that was ready to go at the each deadline, but technical issues prevented it. After a couple of hours of problems, the department used the home page of the county’s website as a results page.

“We had our results at 8:24 (p.m.), but something happened to the county’s website,” Gardner said. “The home page became the results page, which is kind of weird. People were calling in and we’d read them what we had.”

The turnout was at about 56 percent, much lower than past presidential elections that pulled 80 or 85 percent. Gardner said after the vote-by-mail and some provisional ballots, the turnout could get to around 65 percent. He said the department ran smoothly and employees were leaving the building by 1 a.m., much earlier than past years.

“We ramped up everything anticipating the worst. We had a lot of people in place to handle crowds and overflows,” he said. “Overall we left last night at the same time as the primary.”

As of Wednesday, the winners include:

• Fairfield’s Measure P, a 1 percent sales tax, passed.
• Lori Wilson and Mike Segala won seats on the Suisun City Council, while Linda Hobson retained her spot as city clerk and Michael McMurry won the treasurer’s job.
• In Vacaville, Ron Rowlett and Dilenna Harris won City Council spots, while Michelle Thornbrugh won an uncontested race for city clerk and Jay Yerkes topped the treasurer race. Tax measures I and M both passed.
• In Rio Vista, Norm Richardson won for mayor, James McCracken and Dave Hampton ran unopposed for two City Council spots and sales tax Measure O passed.
• Solano Community College’s Measure Q passed, while Rosemary Thurston (Area 3) and Michael Martin (Area 7) each won their spots. Monica Brown leads in the race for Area 5 by 89 votes.
• Jim Frazier won the 11th Assembly District seat, while Lois Wolk won the 3rd Senate District seat. Rep. John Garamendi was re-elected to represent the new 3rd Congressional District.

Reach Danny Bernardini at 427-6935 or dbernardini@dailyrepublic.net. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dbernardinidr.

Danny Bernardini

Danny is a newspaper man born and raised in Vacaville. He attended Chico State University and has written for the Enterprise Record and the Reporter. Covers the City of Fairfield, education and crime. A's, Warriors and Saints fan. Listener of vinyl, frequent visitor to the East Bay. Registered "decline to state" voter. Loves a good steak.

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