Santa Ana: Early Results Show Councilmember Avoiding Recall

Early results from a special election in Santa Ana show Councilmember Jessie Lopez staving off a recall attempt.

As of Wednesday evening, 56% of votes tallied were against ousting Lopez, according to the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

The registrar has more than 400 ballots left to process, with more likely to trickle in by mail in the coming days. In all, some 26,700 people were eligible to vote in the recall election — the turnout so far is 25%. The next vote count update is scheduled for Thursday at 5 p.m.

Lopez was targeted for recall by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and several real estate groups, largely because of her voting record in favor of rent control and policies that her opponents deemed "anti-police." They cite as an example Lopez's 2021 vote against a law that would have made it illegal to be a spectator at street races.

Lopez told LAist earlier this month that the recall effort has been spearheaded by "special interest groups that push policies that harm working class people."

Legal questions

The recall election has been mired in legal questions. After ballots had been sent out, O.C. Registrar Bob Page said he realized the city was using the wrong district boundaries and the wrong population data to calculate how many signatures were needed to trigger the recall and who would get to vote.

As a result, he said nearly 1,200 voters who should have been eligible to vote did not get ballots.

Using the correct district boundaries, Page also calculated that the initial recall petition actually fell short of the number required to hold an election by 230 signatures. In late October, Page rescinded his initial verification that recall petitioners had met the signature threshold.

Based on these problems, a voter in Lopez's district filed a court challenge to the recall in early November. The Orange County Superior Court judge in that case decided not to issue a ruling until January.

Shannon Ortiz, a resident of Ward 3, which is represented by Lopez, said she was aware of the legal questions surrounding the recall but was casting her ballot anyway.

"I don't have personal control over whether this is happening today, but I do have control over my own vote," she said outside a vote center in Santa Ana on Tuesday.

Kathy Hettick said she hadn't heard of the legal problems with the special election, but she had gotten a lot of mailers from both sides of the recall.

"I get mail saying vote 'yes,' I get mail saying vote 'no,'" she said. "That really bothers me because that costs money."

What happens next?

If there are more votes to be counted beyond Wednesday’s 5 p.m. update, the O.C. registrar will update the results on subsequent days until all ballots are counted. The registrar has until Dec. 8 to certify the results.

It’ll be up to Santa Ana’s city council to then accept the results. At the end of last month, they deadlocked on whether to cancel the election because of the district boundary issues raised by the registrar's office.