Countywide : Races Unaffected by Absentee Vote

Absentee ballots turned in at the polls on Election Day and counted later did not change the outcome of either the Moorpark City Council or Oxnard mayoral races, county officials said Monday.

Ventura County Clerk and Recorder Richard D. Dean late Monday released the results of nearly 12,000 absentee ballots not a part of the election night tally and which some candidates hoped might bring new results in their tightly contested races.

In Moorpark, incumbent councilmen Bernardo Perez and Roy Talley were separated by just 37 votes after the polls closed Tuesday--Perez with 4,107 votes and Talley with 4,070. But a count of an estimated 500 absentee ballots allowed Perez to lengthen his lead slightly over Talley, 4,357 votes to 4,312, to grab the two-year seat reserved for the third-highest vote getter. Incumbent Scott Montgomery had 5,208 votes after the absentees were counted and political novice Patrick Hunter had 5,057--both win four-year seats.

Oxnard mayoral hopefuls Manuel M. Lopez and Michael (Mike) A. Plisky were separated by 263 votes after the election, with about 1,400 absentee ballots to count. Monday’s results show Plisky was able to cut Lopez’s lead, but not by enough votes to win the election. Lopez finished with 14,239 votes to Plisky’s 14,081, a difference of 158.

Plisky will finish out the final two years on his Oxnard council term.

Still to be counted before the Board of Supervisors certifies the election results--expected on Nov. 24--are provisional ballots cast by voters who claimed they were eligible but did not appear on the county roster. Dean said that there may be 750 to 1,000 of these ballots countywide and that they would be unlikely to bear on the Oxnard or Moorpark races.

One race the provisional ballots could still affect, though, is for three seats on the Bell Canyon Community Services board. After absentee results were tallied Monday, only three votes separated the third- and fourth-place finishers. The top four on Monday were Hannelore Buss, 329; Marc Silverstein, 301; incumbent Arch D. McGregor, 293; and John F. Moistner, 290. Before the late absentees were counted, Moistner led McGregor by three votes.