SEAL BEACH : Consolidated Elections to Alter Vote-Count Process

When the Legislature moved the presidential primary from June to the fourth Tuesday in March, the new date just happened to coincide with city elections.

Rather than having separate ballots, the City Council voted last week to consolidate local elections with the next presidential primary.

But city leaders say consolidation will end the small-town practice of counting votes in City Council chambers where campaign workers spend election night cheering and jeering as the tallies are updated on a chalkboard.

During the next presidential primary on March 26, 1996, votes for council candidates will be counted at the Orange County registrar of voters office in Santa Ana.

But the change is not permanent. Local vote counting will be conducted by the county only during presidential primaries.

“During the last city election, the votes were counted right on the floor of the council chambers and everybody cheered,” Mayor George Brown said. “It was kind of like a high school basketball game. There’s a lot of town spirit in it.”

Council members agreed to give the election consolidation a one-time trial run, reserving the right to change the date of local elections. Councilman Frank Laszlo said the biggest drawback of consolidation is that election results will not come until after most residents have gone to bed.

“Before anybody finds out results, it will probably be three or four o’clock in the morning,” Laszlo said. “There’s a possibility that (local) candidates will get lost in all the rhetoric that goes on with the presidential primaries.”