Update 4/12/2012:Â Mayor Gary Kovacic dominated the voting in the race for one of two Arcadia City Council seats Tuesday, April 10, 2012, while former Mayor John Wuo pulled away from an early close race with Mary Dougherty to claim the second seat.
Returning to Arcadia City Council: Mayor Gary Kovacic (left) and former Mayor John Wuo
With 691 ballots yet to have signatures verified, here is the preliminary vote total of the 6,262 ballots that have been verified as of 10:58 p.m.:
Kovacic: 3,769 (60%) Wuo: 2,716 (43.3%) Dougherty: 2,109 (33.6%) Tay: 1,806 Â (28.8%) Nunez: 806 (12.87%))
For City Clerk: Gene Glasco: 3,321 (53%) (unopposed)
Measure D (Extending hotel bed tax): * Yes: 3,833 *Â No: 1,013
In the city’s first all-mail ballot City Council election, about 15% – 20% of the ballots were hand-delivered to City Hall on Monday and today, Tuesday. Nearly 7,000 ballots were submitted overall, about 3,000 less than were mailed in or hand-delivered during last month’s Measure A parcel tax election for the Arcadia School District, which collected more than the required two-thirds approval of voters.
Less than 5,000 voters checked a Yes or No for the Measure D hotel tax extension proposal, which was on the back side of Tuesday’s City election ballot that a lot of voters failed to notice.
City Clerk candidate Gene Glasco ran unopposed and received 3,321 votes.
In Tuesday’s City Council election, only Kovacic was selected by a majority of those who voted. Dougherty had just 600 fewer votes than Wuo. The margin between Dougherty and Tay was even slimmer — about 300 votes.
The month-long election got off to a rocky start when the Chinese language on the ballots instructed that voters could select up to three candidates. The City sent notices a week or so later alerting voters to the typo but some Chinese-speaking voters had already turned in ballots voting for three candidates. Those voters were instructed to alert the City Clerk’s office and request a new ballot. 99 ballots were submitted with too many votes cast that had to be rejected. About a dozen voters requested new ballots.
Other Chinese-speaking voters were confused by the mistaken ballot and the subsequent mailing, and thus did not turn in any ballot, mistakenly awaiting the mailing of a corrected ballot. At least one other said they were waiting to send in their ballot until after the busy tax season since they thought the election was not until June — that’s when the statewide Primary election is scheduled.
— By Scott Hettrick