Murrieta City Council elections: DeForest ahead in District 3, Stone leading in District 4

Four candidates are competing for the two open seats on Murrieta's City Council.

The four candidates - Steve Brown and Lisa DeForest for City Council District 3, and David Kolk and Lori Stone for District 4 - qualified in late July and early August of this year to run for Murrieta City Council's two open seats.

As of the morning of Nov. 4, DeForest was leading Brown in District 3, 4,172 votes to 1,185.

In District 4, Stone was ahead of Kolk, 3,439 votes to 1,664, as Wednesday morning.

Results, however, are not final — the Riverside County Registrar of Voters' office says about 400,000 mail ballots and 25,000 provisional ballots still need to be processed countywide as of Wednesday morning.

Ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day also remain to be counted, the registrar's office said. The next updated results will be posted at 6:00pm on Thursday.

City council members in Murrieta serve four-year overlapping terms. On Nov. 6, 2018, the city first began transitioning to the district-based election format by electing three members currently still serving their terms: Jonathan Ingram for district one, Christi White for district two, and Scott Vinton for district five, who is also mayor pro tem.

Mayor Gene Wunderlich, who isn't running in 2020, will leave open the District 3 seat. Wunderlich was appointed as mayor by a surprise 3-2 council vote at the Dec. 17 council meeting in 2019.

Councilman Kelly Seyarto is running for the 67th Assembly District seat, leaving Murrieta's District 4 seat open.

Polls, which remained open for in-person voting or ballot drop off, closed at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.

According to city staff, the city currently has 54,000 registered voters. Due to changes to the election because of COVID-19, mail-in ballots may cause a delay in counts. Many have been pushing mail-in ballots over in-person to keep down the spread.

According to city staff, a normal election year might see results the next morning; it will depend on how many mail-in ballots are received today, and signatures have to be verified before the ballots can be counted.

While the results may still come in tomorrow morning, Nov. 4, it may be a day or two before final results are announced.

Lexington Howe can be reached by email at [email protected].