Tamisha Torres-Walker Wins Antioch City Council Race by 3 Votes

On Thursday, the Contra Costa County Elections continued counting ballots and have determined incumbent Tamisha Torres-Walker has defeated Joy Motts by a just three votes.

This is a race that has gone back and forth and was even in a tie at the last update.

Thursdays results after a manual talley:

• 34.36% – Tamisha Torres Walker (1,467)
• 34.29% – Joy Motts (1,464)
• 31.36% – Diana Gibson-Gray (1,339)

Contra Costa County Elections Reminds Residents “Ballot Harvesting” is Legal Under State Law

Contra Costa County Elections reminds residents that “ballot harvesting” is legal under state law and did confirm 14 people are registered to vote using Antioch City Hall.

According to County Elections:

Unhoused citizens are eligible to vote. A residence address is not required, but a residence location, e.g., a cross-street or other location where they consider their home base, is. It is legal for someone to make an effort to go to the unhoused population to register them to vote. Ballot harvesting is also legal, and is the process of someone collecting voted Vote-by-Mail ballots with the voter’s permission and returning them to us on behalf of the voter.  The term is sometimes used to describe what people think is dumping batches of ballots into drop boxes, but “naked” ballots, i.e., those without a signed VBM envelope that can be attributed to a specific registered voter, would be rejected.

Any person who registers may choose a different mailing address than that of their residence.  We see many unhoused persons request General Delivery at their local post office as their mailing address, or use a PO box, or the mailing address of a friend or relative. We have 14 voters who are listing the City Hall as their residence address, but unhoused persons are not required to do so.  

The deadline to register to vote was October 24; any online or paper registrations after that date would not have received a ballot in the mail.  The only way to register that close to the election and still vote would have been in person at our office in Martinez (48 hours to Election Day), or in person at Regional Early Voting site on Monday or on Election Day via CVR (Conditional Voter Registration – these are being processed with the Provisional ballots, and I don’t have a count on those just yet.) The 2 Regional Early Voting sites closest to Antioch were in Pittsburg at the Pittsburg Library (8 Provisionals) and in Brentwood at the Brentwood Community Center (16 Provisionals). The number of people who registered and voted in our office in Martinez on Monday, November 7 is 12. We were not open on Sunday.

The Contra Costa Elections Division social media pages are:

• https://www.Twitter.com/CoCoElections
• https://www.facebook.com/ContraCostaElections/