Top 3 look to win city seats

BY Ariana Shah

Dale Welty

It appears Dale Welty and the two incumbents, Jordan Ehrenkranz and Larry Greene, were headed to winning the three seats on the City of Canyon Lake City Council. Riverside County Registrar of Voters held back results Tuesday night until about 400,000 county mail-in votes were tabulated last night.

The results very early Wednesday morning were the last numbers released until last night. With 3,459 voters’ ballots having been counted, the results were Dale Welty (1,734), Jordan Ehrenkranz (1,624), Larry Greene (1,543), Jim Randle (1,043) and Paul Kakis (999). The top three win.

Canyon Lake historically has very high voter turnout. With an anticipated 75% turnout, 2,500 more voters were expected to be counted. Each voter could vote for three of the five candidates.

Jordan Ehrenkranz

With The Friday Flyer having already gone to print, the final results will be published on the fridayflyer.com website when the county releases the final results.The three winning candidates will serve on the city council for a term of four years. There are five members of the city council. Mayor Pro-tem Casey Castillo and Council Member Jeremy Smith are the two members of the city council whose terms expire in two years. Current Council Member Randy Bonner did not run for re-election.

The city election was part of the General Election where Canyon Lakers flocked to two different voting sites to cast their votes. Many more cast their votes via mail-in ballots.

City Hall had accepted early voting ballots and also hosted a drop-off ballot drive thru on Monday and Tuesday.

Voting in person and ballot drop offs also occurred in the Magnolia Room at the Canyon Lake Country Club.

“We have been working at the ballot drive thru since early morning,” worker Erin Enriquez said. “We have had so many voters…it’s been such a large range of people.”

Larry Greene

As many Canyon Lakers rushed to get through the voting, they were rarely met with any long lines and voting was a swift process, Erin said.

“We even had a Girl Scout visit to earn her democracy badge!” Bailey Ward, a precinct worker, said. “It’s great to see the large mixture of people stopping by to exercise their rights.”

The Magnolia Room was also buzzing with volunteers as they guided voters to voting booths. For those who decided to vote in person, they were met with sanitized touch screen computers and instructed to maintain a distance of six feet from others.

“It’s been a wonderful time!” Mary Jane Hodges, a volunteer, said. “We have met so many first-time voters. We honor them so much. This is a very important election, and we hope to see everybody next year.”