Registrar certifies election results

With the election three weeks in the past, Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley on Wednesday certified the Nov. 7 election results.

The Newport-Mesa races’ outcomes don’t change, though some candidates edged a few percentage points up or down since their Election Day totals.

Voter turnout wasn’t as dismal as predicted. With every vote counted, turnout was 50.5% of Orange County’s 1,497,397 registered voters. In keeping with a recent trend, nearly half the votes cast — 24.1% — were absentee ballots.

Getting the final results took three weeks because election officials had to count more than 206,000 ballots after polls closed.

In Costa Mesa, Mayor Allan Mansoor ended up with nearly 30% of the votes in the City Council race. Wendy Leece, who won the other of two seats, received 24.4% of the votes. Their closest competitor, Bruce Garlich, finished at 21.2%.

The margin of defeat for Measure X, a growth-control initiative in Newport Beach, rose by about a percentage point with all votes counted. It lost with 63.3% of residents voting it down.

None of the totals in the school and college board races changed either, although one of them was a squeaker. For the Coast Community College District’s fourth trustee area, incumbent Mary Hornbuckle, who was appointed to her post in March 2005, beat William Howard Taft University President David Boyd by less than one percentage point. Hornbuckle took 42.6% of the vote, while Boyd came up short with 41.7%.

The other college district race, as well as all three races in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, changed little from the days after election night. Jim Moreno, a two-time candidate for the Huntington Beach City Council, decidedly won the race to follow outgoing college trustee George Brown. In Newport-Mesa, incumbent Judy Franco and newcomers Karen Yelsey and Michael Collier retained their sizable leads.

For complete Orange County results, go to www.ocvote.com/ live/gen2006/results.htm.