Early results from a special election in Santa Ana show Councilmember Jessie Lopez staving off a recall attempt.
Just under 45% of votes counted so far on Wednesday morning were in favor of ousting Lopez, according to the latest preliminary tally from the Orange County Registrar of Voters.
But the registrar has at least 450 ballots left to process, with more likely to trickle in by mail in the coming days. In all, some 26,700 people were eligible to vote in the recall election — the initial turnout was 22%. The next vote count update is scheduled for Wednesday at 5 p.m.
Lopez was targeted for recall by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and several real estate groups, largely because of her voting record in favor of rent control and policies that her opponents deemed “anti-police.” They cite as an example Lopez’s 2021 vote against a law that would have made it illegal to be a spectator at street races.
Lopez told LAist earlier this month that the recall effort has been spearheaded by “special interest groups that push policies that harm working class people.”
Legal questions
The recall election has been mired in legal questions. After ballots had been sent out, O.C. Registrar Bob Page said he realized the city was using the wrong district boundaries and the wrong population data to calculate how many signatures were needed to trigger the recall and who would get to vote.
As a result, he said nearly 1,200 voters who should have been eligible to vote did not get ballots.
Using the correct district boundaries, Page also calculated that the initial recall petition actually fell short of the number required to hold an election by 230…
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