Election Day is upon us, serving as a deadline to show up to the polls, get mail ballots postmarked or drop them off at vote centers or drop boxes. 

Manhattan Beach voters face a robust array of local choices:

• 3 seats on the 5-member city council (with 6 candidates running);
• Measure RLS, a school improvement bond measure to extend the current school bond rate. (Generating approximately $200 million to fund local school repairs.);
• Measure MMB, a measure by the city of Manhattan Beach to add a half-cent sales tax in the city. (The current sales tax is 9.5% in Manhattan Beach.); and
• Measure BC, a $30 million bond measure for Beach Cities Health District. (It would levy approximately $3.00 per $100,000 of assessed value on residences in the Beach Cities.)

MB News co-hosted a city council candidate forum on Oct. 17, attended by all 6 candidates. (See our story from the next day, with links to the event transcript and video.)

Each candidate published their own "closing argument" here at MB News in the final week. See each one here: Steve Charelian, Joe Franklin, Karen Komatinsky, Joe Marcy, Brenda O'Leary, Nina Tarnay.

You can also catch up on all the details about each of the local ballot measures in this MB News story.

Need to know where to go to vote today? We've got the details just a bit below in this story.

Many Local Voters Cast Ballots Early

Data are now available on which local voters took advantage of the earliest vote options.

Before vote centers opened on Nov. 2, 36% of all Manhattan Beach voters had mailed or dropped off their ballots and had them logged by Los Angeles County. 

The city's voters appeared to be much more interested in taking advantage of early-vote options than those in Los Angeles County as a whole, where only 24% of registered voters had ballots logged by Nov. 1.

So-called "absentee" voting has proved extremely popular since the state of California began mailing all voters a ballot at home. The first time the state did so was for the Nov. 2020 election. State law was changed in 2021 to make the practice permanent. 

Voting and ballot drop-offs increased as the election neared and vote centers opened Saturday, but there is no doubt where voter preferences stand. In-person voting was chosen by 17% of Manhattan Beach voters casting ballots in November 2020, with covid-19 prevalent, and by just 17.8% of voters who cast ballots in November 2022, after covid concerns had diminished somewhat.

Whatever methods local voters choose, the city of Manhattan Beach has had high voter turnout in recent November elections: 68.3% in Nov. 2022 and 87.4% in Nov. 2020. This year's turnout seems likely to fall somewhere between those figures.

Partisan & Older Voters More Likely to Vote Early

Voters registered with one of the two major parties were somewhat more likely to vote early in Manhattan Beach than those registered with smaller parties or as "decline to state" voters.

Voters registered with the Democratic party make up 43% of local voters, but they represented 47% of early votes tallied by Nov. 1. Meantime, Republican-registered voters make up 28% of local voters, but 30% of the early votes. 

Meantime, though 29% of local voters are registered non-partisan or with smaller parties, they accounted for just 25% of the early-vote totals.

Older voters frequently turn out to vote at a notably higher rate than younger voters. This was profoundly true with regard to those voting by Nov. 1.

Seniors aged 65 and above make up 26% of all Manhattan Beach voters, but 39% of all the early ballots received – meaning these older voters outshone their proportion in the electorate by 50% among early voters.

Voters aged 50-64 slightly exceeded their 28% share of local voter registrations, making up 30% of the early votes. 

Meantime, voters in the broad age ranges of 18-49 make up 46% of all local registered voters, but only 30% of those casting an early ballot. (The 30% was evenly split, with 15% being voters aged 18-34 and 15% being 35-49.)

Some of these imbalances surely will be reduced as the final votes come in, but voters 65 and older set a high bar with their early turnout. 

If you need to check the status of your voter registration, see this page provided by the California Secretary of State: Voter Status.

After you have dropped off your ballot, you can track it (when it is received and counted) using BallotTrax, also provided by the California Secretary of State.