Updated Vote Count Narrows Gap for Third Slot on Banning School Board

Updated election results for the Banning Unified School District board of trustees narrowed the gap between a challenger and the only incumbent running for the decisive third slot on the five-seat panel.

The election was held Tuesday but there are still votes to be counted, according to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.

The results, updated Thursday afternoon, showed child care worker Alejandro Cassadas leading incumbent board member Deborah Dukes by 17 votes, less than one-fifth of one percent of more than 9,300 total votes counted in the school board election.

In an earlier count released late Tuesday, Dukes had trailed Cassadas by 28 votes.

Retired science teacher Larry Ellis and retired school administrator Ray Curtis maintained comfortable leads in the latest results. Ellis, Curtis and Cassadas were endorsed by the .

With vying for three seats on the five-seat board, the updated but uncertified results were:

Larry Ellis                    2,309 votes

Ray Curtis                   2,089 votes

Alejandro Cassadas    1,510 votes

Deborah Dukes           1,493 votes

David Vanden Heuvel     922 votes

Maxine Israel                  681 votes

Alfredo Andrade             394 votes

The registrar reported 9,398 total votes counted in the election, but did not report a total number of ballots counted.

"Our goal is to certify the election and have final results by Nov. 18," Assistant Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Certification requires several steps, Spencer said.

"First we have to work on vote-by-mail ballots," she said. "We had 4,000 county-wide dropped off at voting places."

Vote-by-mail ballots must be signature-checked, removed from envelopes, and counted, Spencer said.

Next is a roster audit, comparing the number of voter signatures at individual polling places with the number of ballots cast at individual polling places.

Provisional ballots - for voters who were not on rosters at individual polling locations - must be checked to ascertain the voters who used provisional ballots were eligible, Spencer said.

A 1 percent manual tally of the 56 precincts in the school board election must also be performed.

And a 100 percent manual tally of all electronic ballots is required, Spencer said. There was one electronic voting machine at each of seven polling locations for the Banning Unified School District board election, she said.

The number of ballots cast will be available once is certified and results are finalized, Spencer said.