New election results: Another 18,800 ballots added in latest SLO County update

The San Luis Obispo County elections office released a new batch of results on Saturday, adding nearly 19,000 more ballots to the total.

By Saturday afternoon, the county Clerk-Recorder’s Office had counted another 18,800 ballots since the previous ballot drop on Wednesday, bringing the total tally to 147,748 ballots tabulated with only 6,274 left. The office expects to have the final count competed on Dec. 3.

The races for Grover Beach mayor, Paso Robles City Council, Lucia Mar Unified School District, Atascadero City Council and school board remained in the spotlight.

In Grover Beach, Kassi Dee continued to pull away from Debbie Peterson in the race for mayor, widening her lead to 477 votes.

In Paso, Kris Beal was up by 120 votes over Sharon Roden in the District 1 City Council race, while Steve Gregory led by 279 votes over Michael Rivera in District 3.

In Atascadero, Seth Peek remained as the leader, followed by Mark Dariz, in the race for two City Council seats. Tori Keen has fallen to a distant third, down by 726 votes.

As for the city’s school board, Joey Arnold, Corinne Kuhnle and Jodi Taylor continued to hold the top three spots with Veronica DeCoster trailing by 192 for the third spot of three open seats.

Down south, Mike Fuller held a 60-vote lead in the race for the Lucia Mar school district’s Trustee Area 4 seat.

Finally, a Templeton school district bond finally made it over the 55% threshold for the first time in this year’s vote count. Atascadero’s also is headed to victory. And even Lucia Mar is now barely trailing at 54.93%, up from 54.02% on Wednesday.

This year’s post-election canvass is taking longer than usual due to a higher volume of mail-in and provisional ballots than ever before, Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said. The elections office received more than 140,000 mailed ballots this election — making up 95% of the ballots counted so far — each of which requires an extensive verification process, Clerk-Recorder’s Officer public information officers Erin Clausen told The Tribune.

Cano has until Dec. 3 to certify the results of the election, she said.

The elections office will release another round of election results on Wednesday, and once more on Dec. 3 for the final certified results, Clerk-Recorder’s Officer public information officers Erin Clausen told The Tribune.

Here are the latest numbers for local races for city councils, mayors, school boards and more.

SLO County mayoral and city council races

Front-runners for the number of seats available are in bold.

Paso Robles City Council

District 1 seat:

• Kris Beal, 43.7%
• Sharon Roden, 39.3%
• Linda George, 16.8%

District 3 seat:

• Steve Gregory, 43.6%
• Michael Rivera, 35.4%
• Jeff Carr, 20.9%

Atascadero City Council

• Seth Peek, 35.1%
• Mark Dariz, 34.0%
• Tori Keen, 30.7%

Grover Beach mayor

• Kassi Dee, 43.4%
• Debbie Peterson, 34.9%
• Robert Robert, 21.6%

Grover Beach City Council

District 3 seat:

• Kathy McCorry, 53.0%
• Marsha Bolyanatz, 46.9%

District 2 recall of Councilmember Dan Rushing:

• Yes, 55.1%
• No, 44.8%

Arroyo Grande mayor

• Caren Ray Russom, 64.2%
• Gaea Powell, 35.7%

Arroyo Grande City Council

District 3 seat:

• Jamie Maraviglia, 56.3%
• Marlea Harmon, 43.6%

Pismo Beach mayor

• Ed Waage, 64.5%
• Kevin Kreowski, 35.4%

Pismo Beach City Council

• Scott Newton, 48.3%
• Marcia Guthrie, 36.4%
• Gianni Scangarello, 15.1%

San Luis Obispo mayor

• Erica Stewart, 85.0%
• Donald Hedrick, 14.9%

San Luis Obispo City Council

• Jan Marx, 37.7%
• Mike Boswell, 34.3%
• John Drake, 17.7%
• Felicia Lewis, 10.1%

School board results

Front-runners for the number of seats available in bold.

Atascadero school board

• Joey Arnold, 22.9%
• Corinne Kuhnle, 20.7%
• Jodi Taylor, 20.1%
• Veronica DeCoster, 19.6%
• Matt Pennon, 16.5%

Paso Robles school board

Trustee Area 3 seat:

• Nathan Williams, 63.0%
• Hunter Breese, 36.9%

Trustee Area 5 seat:

• Laurene McCoy, 54.9%
• Tim Gearhart, 45.0%

Trustee Area 6 seat:

• Leo Castillo, 52.6%
• Adelita Hiteshew, 47.3%

Trustee Area 7 seat:

• Kenney Enney, 60.1%
• Tracy Dauterman, 39.8%

Templeton school board

• Matt Allison, 27.6%
• Ted Dubost, 27.6%
• Cheryl Parks, 26.6%
• Jason Tesarz, 18.0%

San Luis Coastal school board

• Erica Flores Baltodano, 71.8%
• Eve Hinton, 28.1%

Cayucos Elementary school board

Trustee Area 4

• Peter Schuler, 57.0%
• Scott Smith, 42.9%

Trustee Area 5

• Dan Puett, 76.8%
• Susan Brownell, 23.2%

Lucia Mar school board

Trustee Area 1

• Don Stewart, 53.6%
• Paul Bischoff, 46.3%

Trustee Area 3

• Dee Santos, 53.1%
• Paul Hively, 46.8%

Trustee Area 4

• Mike Fuller, 50.4%
• Vicki Meagher, 49.5%

Ballot measures

Paso Robles Measure I-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 54.2%
• No, 45.7%

Pismo Beach Measure F-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 62.3%
• No, 37.6%

Arroyo Grande Measure E-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 64.8%
• No, 35.1%

Morro Bay Measure A-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 59.8%
• No, 40.1%

Grover Beach Measure G-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 64.6%
• No, 35.3%

Atascadero Measure L-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 70.5%
• No, 29.4%

Atascadero Measure M-24, needs majority vote to pass:

• Yes, 49.0%

• No, 50.9%

Atascadero School District Measure B-24, needs 55% to pass:

• Yes, 56.3%
• No, 43.6%

Lucia Mar School District Measure H-24, needs 55% to pass:

• Yes, 54.9%
• No, 45.0%

Templeton School District Measure D-24, needs 55% to pass:

• Yes, 55.5%
• No, 45.4%

Cambria Community Healthcare District’s Measure C-24, needs a two-thirds vote and the simultaneous approval of Proposition 5 to pass:

• Yes, 76.5%
• No, 23.4%

Latest results from CSDs and Port San Luis Harbor District

Oceano Community Services District

Division 1 seat:

• Linda Austin, 78.7%
• Angela Smith, 21.2%

Division 5 seat:

• Shirley Gibson, 57.5%
• Charles Varni, 42.4%

Nipomo Community Services District

• John Joyce, 51.5%
• Philip Henry, 37.9%
• James Wejrowki, 10.5%

Port San Luis Harbor District

• Richard Scangarello, 60.5%
• Katie Lichtig, 39.4%

Who won state races?

Congress

District 19

• Jimmy Panetta, 69.3%
• Jason Anderson, 30.7%

District 24

• Salud Carbajal, 62.7%
• Thomas Cole, 37.3%

State Senate

District 17

• John Laird, 65.0%
• Tony Virrueta, 35.0%

District 21

• Monique Limon, 63.3%
• Elijack Mack, 36.7%

State Assembly

District 30

• Dawn Addis, 62.5%
• Dalila Epperson, 37.5%

District 37

• Gregg Hart, 60.8%
• Sari Domingues, 39.2%

Did SLO County voters favor Harris or Trump?

Contrary to the elections’ nationwide results, San Luis Obispo County voters significantly favored Vice President Kamala Harris over former and future President Donald Trump, according to the vote count.

As of the Saturday drop, 53.9% of ballots counted were cast for Harris, compared to Trump’s 43.0%.

The totals were pretty close 2020, when President Joe Biden took home 55.3% of the San Luis Obispo County vote, while Trump garnered 42.2%.

This story was originally published November 23, 2024 at 4:53 PM with the headline "New election results: Another 18,800 ballots added in latest SLO County update."

Chloe Shrager

The Tribune

(805) 781-7809

Chloe Shrager is the courts and crimes reporter for The Tribune. She grew up in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in Political Science. When not writing, she enjoys surfing, backpacking, skiing and hanging out with her cat, Billy Goat. Support my work with a digital subscription