Motts and Torres-Walker Now Tied in Antioch District 1 Race

On Wednesday, Contra Costa County Elections issued its fourth release of election results with close races in the City of Antioch, City of Martinez and City of Richmond.

Elector Group Counting Group Cards Cast Voters Cast Registered Voters Turnout
Total Early In-Person 4,032 1,008 0.14%
Vote By Mail 1,431,055 357,991 51.00%
Election Day 138,985 34,759 4.95%
Total 1,574,072 393,758 701,969 56.09%

Unprocessed Ballots:

• Vote By Mail – 0
• Provisional – 217*
• Other – 1,683**

*CVR Ballots In Review
**Challenged VBM Ballots (No Signature or Signature Does Not Match)

While many races have winners, some races are too close to call. Here is a look at some of the closer races in Contra Costa County:

Antioch City Council District 1

• • Tamisha Torres-Walker – 34.30% (1,462)
  • Joyann E Motts – 34.30% (1,462)
  • Diane Gibson-Gray – 31.39% (1,338)

City of Martinez – Mayor

• Brianne Zorn – 24.40% (3,857)
• Sean Trambley – 23.19% (3,666)
• Lara Delaney – 22.36% (3,534)
• Mike Menesini – 12.61% (1,993)
• Mark Ross –11.43% (1,807)
• Michael Ayers – 6.00% (949)

City of Martinez – District 4

• Debbie McKillop – 50.25% (2,180)
• Ben Therriault – 49.75% (2.158)

City of Richmond – District 2

• Andrew Butt – 50.07% (1,919)
• Cesar Zepeda – 49.93% (1.914)

For full election results: Click here

In the case of a tie:
To break a tie, based on state law, the winner must be decided by lot, a random contest.  Back in 2018, Larry Enos and Pete Petrovich rolled a 20-sided die three times to determine the winner in the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District Director 1 race

Contra Costa County Elections Reminds Residents “Ballot Harvesting” is Legal Under State Law

Contra Costa County Elections reminds residents that “ballot harvesting” is legal under state law and did confirm 14 people are registered to vote using Antioch City Hall.

According to County Elections:

Unhoused citizens are eligible to vote. A residence address is not required, but a residence location, e.g., a cross-street or other location where they consider their home base, is. It is legal for someone to make an effort to go to the unhoused population to register them to vote. Ballot harvesting is also legal, and is the process of someone collecting voted Vote-by-Mail ballots with the voter’s permission and returning them to us on behalf of the voter.  The term is sometimes used to describe what people think is dumping batches of ballots into drop boxes, but “naked” ballots, i.e., those without a signed VBM envelope that can be attributed to a specific registered voter, would be rejected.

Any person who registers may choose a different mailing address than that of their residence.  We see many unhoused persons request General Delivery at their local post office as their mailing address, or use a PO box, or the mailing address of a friend or relative. We have 14 voters who are listing the City Hall as their residence address, but unhoused persons are not required to do so.  

How many voter registrations occurred both day of election and within 48-hours of the election?

 The deadline to register to vote was October 24; any online or paper registrations after that date would not have received a ballot in the mail.  The only way to register that close to the election and still vote would have been in person at our office in Martinez (48 hours to Election Day), or in person at Regional Early Voting site on Monday or on Election Day via CVR (Conditional Voter Registration – these are being processed with the Provisional ballots, and I don’t have a count on those just yet.) The 2 Regional Early Voting sites closest to Antioch were in Pittsburg at the Pittsburg Library (8 Provisionals) and in Brentwood at the Brentwood Community Center (16 Provisionals). The number of people who registered and voted in our office in Martinez on Monday, November 7 is 12. We were not open on Sunday.

The Contra Costa Elections Division social media pages are:

• https://www.Twitter.com/CoCoElections
• https://www.facebook.com/ContraCostaElections/