Nov. 05--As the sun rose Wednesday on a late night of election-returns watching, thousands of ballots were still left to be counted in Los Angeles County, which could tilt some closely fought races.
As of Wednesday morning, all votes cast at Los Angeles County precincts had been counted, but thousands of other ballots, including vote-by-mail ballots that were handed in on election day, provisional ballots and write-in ballots, remained.
Meanwhile, Sheila Kuehl held onto her lead overnight against former Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver in the race for the 3rd District seat on the County Board of Supervisors, updated election results showed early Wednesday.
Kuehl, a former state lawmaker, had garnered nearly 53% of the vote compared to 47% for Shriver.
The winner will take the seat vacated by Zev Yaroslavsky. The race was seen as a pivotal one because the results could tilt power on the county board toward either labor unions or business and development.
In the race for county assessor, Jeffrey Prang, a special assistant in the assessor's office, continued to hold a narrow lead of 50.5% over John Morris, a head deputy to the Los Angeles County district attorney.
Proposition P, which would impose a $23 parcel tax for Los Angeles County parks, had received 62% of the vote, but it needed at least 66% to pass.
In Malibu, Measure R -- an initiative that would give voters the power to approve or deny any commercial development bigger than 20,000 square feet -- had won with 59% of the vote.
To the south in Santa Monica, Measure D, which pushed for the city to stop its effort to scale back or shut down Santa Monica Municipal Airport until the public could vote on future proposals to close the facility or change its land use, had been defeated with 58% voting no.
A competing measure that would let the airport be used only for parks, open space and recreational facilities until voters could approve further limits on development, Measure LC, fared much better with nearly 60% of the vote.
The election results will not be official until December.
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