Santa Barbara County’s June 2 election results were certified Friday by outgoing Clerk-Recorder-Assessor and Registrar of Voters Joe Holland, who lost his re-election bid to Deputy Melinda Greene.

Holland is one of two county department heads ousted in this month’s election, as challenger Kyle Slattery won the auditor-controller race over incumbent Betsy Schaffer. New terms for those county offices start in January.

The Elections Office has been releasing updated results for weeks and on Friday announced the final count: 111,710 ballots cast, which represents a 44.6% voter turnout. 

For the two county supervisor seats on the ballot, Laura Capps had a decisive victory for a second term representing the Second District, and two hopefuls for the Fifth District seat will face each other in November: Ricardo Valencia and Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez. Third-place finisher Cory Bantilan was 374 ballots behind. 

Voters also supported Luis Esparza for the Superior Court judicial seat over longtime Judge Thomas Adams. 

Salud Carbajal and Bob Smith are moving to the November general election for the 24th Congressional District seat. 

Carbajal, a Democrat, has served in Congress since 2016, and Smith, a Republican, is a retired U.S. Navy officer running for the first time. 

Gregg Hart and Sari Domingues will campaign for the 37th District State Assembly seat currently held by Hart. 

Santa Barbara voters passed a charter amendment allowing longer-term leases of city property, and Lompoc voters rejected a higher sales tax rate to fund road repairs. 

Read the certified June 2 election results here.

Rejected Ballots for Late Postmarks from USPS

The Elections Office has reported about 2,300 rejected ballots because of late postmarks. 

Santa Barbara voter Chuck Santry told Noozhawk that his ballot was rejected even after he put it in a post office curbside box on Election Day. 

The U.S. Postal Service does not guarantee same-day mail pickup and postmarking anymore. 

That means voters who mail their ballots right before or on Election Day risk their ballots being postmarked too late to be counted. 

Many voters like Santry didn’t get the message about mailing ballots early, or returning them another way, because of the changes. 

“Judging by the number of ballots received ‘too late’ in this selection, it still seems to be a challenge,” Deputy Registrar of Voters Martin Cobos told Noozhawk. “We do plan to increase our messaging for November 2026 with an emphasis on mailing ballots early.” 

About 125 people responded to a Noozhawk poll about this issue, and 30% of them didn’t know about the new U.S. Postal Service policy. 

Those who did know before the election said they mailed ballots earlier than usual, or dropped them off, because of concerns of late ballots being rejected. They dropped them off at drop box locations, polling places and the Elections Office locations directly. 

Those voters commented that dropping it off, rather than mailing it, seemed more reliable, or that they finished their ballots too late to mail them.