Board hopefuls awaiting results

A rainy evening kept Burbank Unified School District candidates in

their homes Tuesday night, waiting for results that by press time had

not been tallied. Though candidates didn’t make it to City Hall,

where the votes were being tallied, the rain didn’t keep voters from

dropping off their ballots, City Clerk Margarita Campos said.

Candidate Roland Armstorff actually showed up briefly at City Hall

Tuesday evening but went home to await results when he found out

officials hadn’t started counting ballots yet.

“It turned out to be kind of a boring evening,” he said. But

Armstorff, who ran for election in 2003, expected a runoff to be

decided in April’s general election.

Along with Armstorff, candidates for school board include Larry

Applebaum, Nikki Capshaw, Debbie Kukta, Ira Lippman and Susan Bowers.

They ran for two open seats on the council. Trish Burnett and

Connie Lackey are outgoing school board members.

“All the candidates ran a pretty good campaign, so I don’t know

who will be in there,” said Armstorff, hoping he would be a contender

for a runoff election.

This was the first primary election where mail-in/drop-off ballots

were used. The city clerk’s office expected results by about 9 p.m.,

but officials didn’t begin counting ballots until after 9:30 p.m.

“I went into the office last week, and they were hopeful they’d be

putting results up by 8 or 9 p.m.,” Kukta said.

Officials said the count went late because several ballots were

dropped off by hand Tuesday.

Candidate Susan Bowers patiently awaited results late Tuesday

evening at her home but was curious to see how the new ballot process

would work.

“What I’m interested to see is how it affected the turnout,”

Bowers said. “I did find that there were some people that were so

confused about the process. Some people didn’t really know it was a

mail-in ballot.”

All in all, Bowers was pleased with how candidates conducted their

campaigns.

I have been very pleased with the high roads the candidates have

taken,” Bowers said. “It’s been a very clean campaign.”

* ROSETTE GONZALES covers education. She may be reached at (818)

637-3205 or by e-mail at rosette.gonzales@latimes.com.