Polls in American Fork closed about three hours ago, which means less in the age of mail-in ballots than it used to, but does mean we have preliminary results. They won’t be official until the canvass (you want definition 2a) a few weeks hence. But the margins are large enough that we know who the winners are.
My source is the State of Utah . . .
Note: I updated the results below from the County’s November 7 update and added the turnout discussion.
American Fork
Incumbent Mayor Brad Frost won with 78.0% of the vote to George Brown’s 22.0%.
Incumbent city councilors Staci Carroll and Ryan Hunter won new four-year terms with almost identical vote counts. Remember, voters could cast two votes in a four-way race, so the percentages shake out different than in a two-way race.
Ryan Hunter: 33.7% of the vote
Staci Carroll: 33.4%
Deb Anderson: 26.0%
Seth Stewart: 7.4%
An 7-point margin between second and third places (between winning and not winning) isn’t a blowout, but it is fairly large.
Aspen Peaks School District
Two seats on the new school board will represent parts of American Fork.
Jeanne-Marie Burroughs won Seat 6 over Tyler Bahr with 51.5% of the vote.
Jason Theler won Seat 7 over Stephanie Jones with 58.6% of the vote.
Turnout and Thanks
Utah County reports that voter turnout in American Fork was 29 percent, which isn’t bad for a fairly quite, off-year election. The mayoral race was never going to be close, the incumbent city council candidates were strong and their challengers were rather weak and very weak, and there wasn’t much controversy in the races for the new school board seats which include American Fork.
If you study the map, the turnout was much higher in established, mostly single-family neighborhoods, mostly north of State Street, and quite low in the newer, mostly multifamily neighborhoods. We’ve seen this before, and I won’t analyze it here.
As I’ve said many times before, thanks to all the candidates. This self-government thing we have going only works if good people run for office.