L.A. city voters sent conflicting messages, giving wins to both the left and the center.
The vote, which had been scheduled for Nov. 8, was postponed until the next day because of a computer failure.
By then, voters had spent the morning filling out ballots with questions ranging from the use of the words “red” and “blue” to questions about the minimum wage and whether to give the city an increase in employee pay. Voters also had written in some questions about the ballot box.
The results were not released until about 11 p.m. Tuesday, three hours after the polls closed, when the city clerk confirmed that the votes had been tallied and counted.
City officials did not have a complete tally until about 5:30 p.m.
In the first phase of the election, which was closed to absentee ballots and included just under 900,000 votes cast, about 68 percent of people who cast ballots supporting the measure had voted yes, 10.9 percent had voted no and the rest had voted on their ballots.
In the second phase, which was open and included about 735,000 votes cast, about 63.9 percent of people supporting the measure had voted yes, 13.1 percent had voted no and the rest had filled out ballots that did not specifically mention the ordinance.
In the third phase, which was open to absentee ballots, absentee ballots were counted and about 913,000 votes were cast, including about 49 percent of people who voted yes to the measure and about 31 percent who voted no to the measure.
About 6,500 of the questions about the ballot box were written in. About 2,300 of the questions related to the minimum wage. About 2,200 of questions were written in about how to handle the city’s debts.
About 200 of the questions about the ballot box were related to the question of giving the city a tax increase to pay for the general-fund budget.
