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The Alameda County Registrar of Voters counted more ballots Saturday. Countywide ,570,000 ballots have now been counted as of the Saturday afternoon update.

Turnout

With a record 966,088 registered voters this year in the county, turnout from ballots counted so far is 59%. In 2016, the final turnout, from the 888,708 voters who were registered for that election, was 75.4%. So we can assume that there are still a lot of votes to be counted. Biden’s popular vote margin in California will continue to rise. Biden’s margin over Trump in California is now a bit higher than his national margin over Trump in the popular vote.

So far probably about 49,000 ballots have been counted in Berkeley. In 2016, a total 65,430 votes were cast in Berkeley. There are still thousands of votes to be counted here. The electorate in Berkeley is somewhat smaller this year due to covid, since UC dorms are housing many fewer students, and there are presumably fewer students occupying apartments and a higher vacancy rate. 83,778 people were registered to vote in 2016 in Berkeley. This year, according to the latest numbers, about 79,000 ballots were issued in Berkeley. 

Rent Board  

The Right to Housing slate nominated by this year’s Tenant Convention, which had a record attendance of over 700 people, has swept all five seats on the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board.  

Incumbent commissioner Leah Simon-Weisberg, Directing Attorney of the Eviction Defense Collaborative, is the top vote getter, with 24,619 votes so far. Mari Mendonca, an appointed incumbent on the board, and the lowest vote getter on the slate, has 16,971 votes so far. She is 1646 votes ahead of Bahman Ahmadi, the highest voter getter on the Homeowners for Rent Board slate. Her vote margin over Ahmadi has increased as more votes have been counted.  

Carole Marasovic is currently running seventh for the five seats. She had sought the Tenant Convention nomination and pledged on a candidate questionnaire not to run if she wasn’t selected as a member of that slate. She broke her pledge and ran as an independent. Some feared she would be a spoiler and cost the slate votes, but to the extent that she did, it was not enough to affect the outcome. 

The lowest vote getter on the landlord slate, Soulmaz Panahi, received 8,948 votes. The spread between the highest vote getter and lowest vote getter on both slates was quite large this year and shows that many voters were not voting for a whole slate. 

More than $136,000 in outside money from the National Association of Realtors Fund (NARF) and the oddly named “Committee for Ethical Housing” was spent supporting this slate, which was made up of five homeowners, four of them from District 6 hills and one from District 5. 

At least three of them were also owners of rental property. 

Independent expenditures from groups like NARF probably do candidates more harm than good. They spent money in support of mayoral candidate Laurie Capitelli in 2016 and that probably helped Jesse Arreguin more than it helped Capitelli. 

Mayor and Council  

Incumbent mayor Jesse Arreguin easily defeated animal rights activist Wayne Hsiung. In the count so far, Arreguin has 29,229 votes or 65%, and Hsiung has 10,522 or 23%, with 4148 votes, 9% for Aiden Hill. For the year through October 17, Hsiung, who has not held public office, or been involved in local politics beyond his animal rights advocacy, outspent Arreguin, $105,501 to $83,441.  

Incumbent Councilmember were all easily re-elected by large margins with the exception of Cheryl Davila in District 2 (southwest Berkeley) who will definitely be replaced by Terry Taplin. In 2016 Davila won 31% of the first choice votes running against incumbent Darryl Moore who received 40%. In that election, Davila picked up most of the second choice votes of a third candidate, Nancy Armstrong Temple.  

This year, so far, Davila has only 29% of the first choice votes, while challenger Terry Taplin has 40% and Alex Sharenko and Timothy Carter have 24% and 6% respectively. When the ranked choice count is done, Taplin gets the lion’s share of Sharenko’s second choice votes and easily defeats Davila with well over 60% of the vote. Taplin was endorsed by Mayor Arreguin and all her council colleagues, except for one who urged voting for both Taplin and Davila. 

Ballot Measures  

All Berkeley ballot measures passed this year except Measure HH, the utility tax increase to fund a Climate Equity Action Fund, which is failing 52.4% to 47.6%. This is a slight improvement compared to the initial count (52.5% to 47.5%), but not enough to offer realistic hope of its passing. Counting of additional ballots has not changed the results of any measure and none have margins small enough to make a change at all likely with further counting. 

Measure HH’s failure may be related to the presence of multiple tax measures on the ballot. Voters did easily pass Measure FF, the firefighting/emergency response tax, (now leading 75% to 25%) and Measure GG, the Uber/Lyft rider tax (now leading 60% to 40%).  

Measure MM, the rent control measure that limits exemptions for ADUs and allows for registration of partially exempt units has a 55% to 45% lead, slightly higher than the election night lead it had and will pass. Measure II, the measure to create a Berkeley Police Accountability Board has received more votes, pro and con than any other measure on the ballot. It currently leads 85% to 15%. 

The countywide sales tax measure, Measure W is winning 51% to 49% and will probably hold on to its narrow lead, unless the remaining votes in the county are heavily from more conservative areas.  

Elizabeth Echols defeated Norman LaForce for East Bay Regional Parks director and is winning in both Alameda County and Contra Costa County. 

In Richmond, Richmond Progressive Alliance endorsed candidates Melvin Willis, Gayle McLaughlin and Claudia Jimenez are all leading by comfortable margins in their respective City Council districts. 

Alameda County results can be found here: https://www.acgov.org/rovresults/241/indexA.htm