Santa Monica Chooses SMRR Over Safety Slate, Electing Ellis Raskin, Natalya Zernitskaya, Dan Hall and Barry Snell

11.5.24: The results are now in (though not final) and it appears none of the 4 members of the Safety Slate have been elected to Santa Monica City Council.

Ellis Raskin lead the field with 13,395 votes, or 13.32%. Dan Hall was second at 13,384 votes, 13.31%. Natalya Zernitskaya finished third at 12,904 and Barry Snell got 12,806 votes. The top four all won seats on the 7 member Council. The numbers of votes are remarkably similar, which suggests a large scale ballot harvesting operation conducted by SMRR.

Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock and Councilmember Oscar de la Torre will not return to the Council, having finished fifth and sixth. Brock was 1000 votes behind Snell.

Votes are in the mail and will be counted as long as they are received by the end of the week. No one knows how many votes are in the mail. No one knows how many votes are still to be counted. While the results seem more or less final, they are not final.

Ballot harvesting in the practice of having paid canvassers go door to door collecting ballots. It is legal under California law.