Quemars Ahmed appeared to be holding on Monday, June 8, in a close race for a second seat on the La Cañada Flintridge City Council.
Ahmed, a member of the city’s Sustainability and Resilience Commission, was leading Planning Commissioner Nerses Aposhian by 207 votes, 29.6% of the vote to Aposhian’s 27.8% of the vote, according to the L.A. County Registrar of Voters.
Both were among a trio of candidates vying for two seats on the council.
Mayor Kim Bowman had garnered 42.5% in updates results Monday afternoon, a position he’s held since last Tuesday, when initial returns were posted.
At one point early on, Aposhian had a slim lead over Ahmed. But that changed later in the week, when Ahmed gained a lead.
The top two vote-getters will win the seats.
• Also see: June 2 Primary Election Results
The city, like many, is dealing with how to make housing more affordable, along with land-use and planning. But public safety and emergency preparedness, in a small city that neighbors the disaster footprint of the Eaton fire, have become common themes in the race.
Bowman, currently the city’s mayor, touts his commitment to public service and his experience as an elder law attorney as laying the groundwork for his work on the council, and reasons for voters to give him the chance to continue his elected leadership.
Ahmed, a member of the city’s Sustainability and Resilience Commission, agrees that fire and emergency preparedness are vital topics in the city, but he emphasized city staffing and planning along with fiscal responsibility as other key issues to be addressed.
Aposhian says he wants to strike a balance between preserving what makes the city special with responsible planning for the future. As a planning commissioner, he says he’s brought a “hands-on,” common sense approach to land use, public safety and neighborhood issues. Housing, emergency preparedness and revitalization of the Foothill corridor are key focuses for him.
The polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and the Los Angeles County registrar’s office released its first rounds of returns shortly after into early Wednesday morning. The first round comprised vote-by-mail ballots that arrived before Election Day. Subsequent updates included VBMs that arrived on Election Day, as well as all ballots cast at Voter Centers.
The majority of ballots still being counted are primarily those sent by mail or submitted in drop boxes close to or on election day. Those ballots are generally believed to skew toward Democrats, since Democrat voters are more likely to mail their ballots.
Ballots can be received as long as a week after the election, as long as they were postmarked by June 2.
Under Assembly Bill 5, which took effect this year, counties are required to count and report most ballots by June 15.
Certain ballot types are exempt from that deadline, including provisional ballots, conditional voter registration ballots, signature cure ballots, ballots requiring duplication, ballots forwarded from other counties and some late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
As of Sunday, according to the Registrar’s Office, an estimated 368,180 ballots needed to be processed.
- Vote by Mail ballots (VBM): 355,000
- Conditional Voter Registration ballots: 11,340
- Provisional ballots: 1,840
City News Service contributed to this report.