Results are becoming more clear, but a couple of races for local offices remained tight after Thursday’s ballot count update from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.  Since Election Night, Patsy Ayala, hoping to win the Santa Clarita City Council District 1 seat, and Edel Alonso, hoping to be reelected to the College of the Canyons governing board, have seen each update appear more favorable toward their causes.  Ayala, a planning commissioner for the city, leads the three-candidate race for City Council with 4,456 votes, or 35.43% of those counted so far. Her commission colleague, Tim Burkhart, had been close behind but now trails both her and Bryce Jepsen.  Jepsen is now in second with 4,063 votes (32.31%) and Burkhart is in third with 4,057 votes (32.26%). Ayala’s lead remains at just under 400 ballots, and with the number of uncounted votes dwindling each day, her lead is looking increasingly secure.  This is the first Santa Clarita City Council election to be divided into districts, with District 1 representing a territory that’s mostly Newhall and a gerrymandered portion of west Canyon Country.  Alonso, currently the president of the Santa Clarita Community College District board of trustees, which oversees College of the Canyons, is leading challenger Scott Schauer by 180 votes as of Thursday. She had led the race to represent Trustee Area No. 2 by 194 votes on Wednesday, and 204 on Tuesday.  Schauer is seeking to join the three other candidates on his slate — Fred Arnold, Sharlene Johnson and Darlene Trevino — who are projected to win COC board seats once L.A. County certifies the election on Dec. 5.  The county reported Thursday that it processed an additional 20,541 ballots to bring the total since Election Night to 3,717,449, representing 64.8% of registered voters. There are an estimated 99,400 ballots left to be counted in the county. It is unknown how many of those are from the Santa Clarita Valley.  Statewide, there have been 14,599,593 ballots counted and an estimated 1,513,597 remain. Thursday’s update included an additional 1,067,359 ballots processed.  The post Ayala, Alonso continue to lead races for City Council, COC board  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.