Election results are certified and changes are coming to many Central Coast cities

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. - The November 5th election results are now getting their certification with the Secretary of State in Sacramento.

Central Coast elections officials have finished processing the final ballots, including those that needed extra inspections.

They included provisional ballots those that were part of the same-day registration batch. Election workers do extensive outreach to get voters to return to the office, for example, to sign their ballot envelope if it was unsigned.

Santa Barbara County Chief Deputy Registrar of Voters, Michael Daly said, "overall everything since election day including election day went really smoothly. We had a lot of dedicated staff diligently hard at work going through the process of counting the ballots and it went really smoothly." 

He said it took a collaboration of full time and seasonal staff member. "Officers at the polls, all of our staff, all of our partners that have helped us put the election on, because we couldn't do it without them."

Among the results, there will be new city council members in Santa Maria, Goleta, Carpinteria, and Santa Barbara. As well as a new Mayor in Buellton.

In Santa Barbara there will be a one percent sales tax increase in Santa Barbara.

The voter turnout was just under 80 percent of the 244,000 registered voters in the county.