HOLLISTER
County supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting certified the November election results, while they showed that 81.6 percent of registered, local voters took part.
While the board made the results official Tuesday, elections workers had completely tallied on Nov. 21.
In order for them to be official, results must be certified by Gonzalez and then approved by the board of supervisors. He said that there was a deadline of Dec. 2 for the final count but Gonzalez had planned to have the results completed by no later than Nov. 21.
The Nov. 4 election had a relatively high turnout of 19,982, or 81.6 percent of registered voters, casting their ballots. Of the total, 46.2 percent of registered voters went a precinct and 35.4 percent voted by vote-by-mail ballot.
The presidential race, which Gonzalez said was the biggest reason for such high turnout, had 19,342 votes. President-elect Barack Obama received 11,917 votes for 60.2 percent of the vote and Sen. John McCain received 7,425 votes for 37.5 percent of the vote in San Benito County.
Congressman Sam Farr also won decisively with 64.4 percent of the 18,986 votes. Jeff Taylor came in second behind Farr with 6,693 votes for 35 percent of the vote.
The biggest local race was for city council District 5 seat between Victor Gomez, Roy Iler and David Huboi. Gomez won the seat with 43.7 percent of the 2,757 ballots cast. Iler and Huboi received 29.6 percent and 25.8 percent, respectively.
Gonzalez said the only surprise to this election was the turnout. “The voter turnout was astounding,” he said. Gonzalez said he would like to keep it up in the future.
