Updated ballot counts released Thursday afternoon kept Fifth District supervisor candidate Ricardo Valencia and city of Santa Barbara mayor candidate Eric Friedman ahead in their respective races.
A Thursday vote count showed 40.2% turnout countywide so far and 61,745 uncounted ballots.
That includes 1,000 ballots that need to be cured, meaning they were unsigned or had noncomparable signatures on the identification envelope.
The office has processed 100,523 ballots so far, and 10,981 since the last update early Wednesday.
The Santa Barbara County Elections Office will release additional updates Tuesday by 3 p.m.
Election night results showed Buellton City Council candidates Billy Silvola and Mark Williams only nine votes apart. Thursday results put Silvola 16 votes ahead.
For Lompoc City Council, incumbent council member Victor Vega was ahead by 49 votes over Sharlameigne Segovia in semi-official results for the District 2 seat.
That gap narrowed in Thursday’s results, with Vega now 31 votes ahead.
Who Will Be Next Santa Barbara Mayor?
In the Santa Barbara mayor’s race, current council member Friedman was ahead of Kristen Sneddon — also a council member — by 312 votes in the batch of results released Thursday, with 10,701 votes compared to Sneddon’s 10,389.
In the semi-official election results early Wednesday, Friedman had 374 more votes than Sneddon, with 8,537 votes to Sneddon’s 8,058.
Friedman now has 46.3% of the vote and Sneddon has 45%.
In Thursday’s update, Wendy Sims-Moten received 5.9% of the vote, and Matt Kilrain had 2.4%.
Friedman told Noozhawk on Tuesday night that he was “optimistic” but wanted to “make sure that every vote is counted.”
Sneddon said in a Wednesday social media post that “with the Mayor’s race not yet determined, I am celebrating the direction Santa Barbara is heading with the council seats.”
She also thanked her volunteers and supporters for voting and working on the campaign.
She could not immediately be reached for a separate comment on Wednesday.
Supervisor Seat Still Undecided
After emerging as the frontrunner in the race for the Fifth District county supervisor in election night results, Valencia has extended his slight lead over Maribel Aguilera.
The Thursday update shows Valencia with 51.6% of the vote and Aguilera with 47.9% of the vote, according to the Santa Barbara County Elections Office.
Early Wednesday results had him with 2,707 votes to Aguilera’s 2,611. Thursday counts show 3,960 votes for Valencia compared to 3,678 for Aguilera.
The winner will fill an open seat on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. The seat represents Santa Maria’s northern neighborhoods, the city of Guadalupe and the unincorporated Tanglewood subdivision.
On Wednesday, Valencia said he is grateful to the community for believing in the campaign, adding that he wants to honor every vote and wait for the final results.
“I’m feeling an immense sense of pride that our campaign ran an ethical campaign where we did not take money from big corporations or special interests,” he told Noozhawk.
Aguilera told Noozhawk on Wednesday that she is grateful to be part of the election process, and thankful for her supporters and the voters. She added that the race is still ongoing.
“We’re patiently waiting for the ballots to be counted,” she said.
The seat currently is held by Steve Lavagnino, who will retire at the end of the year after he announced that he would not seek reelection. Lavagnino was first elected to the board in 2010.
