Published November 4, 2026
NEWPORT BEACH | CITY HALL WATCH | NOVEMBER 4, 2026
Newport woke up Wednesday with a pretty clear early message on Measure H: the no side is ahead. But before anybody hangs a victory banner outside City Hall, the county still has ballots to count.
As of Wednesday, the Registrar’s unofficial count showed Measure H, the proposed change to Newport’s housing plans, trailing by a wide margin: 18,201 no votes and 8,821 yes votes, according to the Registrar of Voters’ current unofficial results. Those are an unofficial snapshot, not the final tally.
The city’s council races also had familiar names out front in the count. Joe Stapleton led in District 1, Erik Weigand in District 3 and Lauren Kleiman in District 6, according to the latest published results. Nobody has an officially certified win yet. The Registrar’s schedule says results will continue to be updated at 5 p.m. each weekday until certification.
Measure H was about the city’s housing blueprint, not a bulldozer arriving tomorrow morning. A yes vote would have changed what Newport’s planning documents permit. With no leading, the existing plans are not being rewritten by this measure based on these unofficial returns. That’s a meaningful difference, even if the ballot wording wasn’t exactly beach reading.
Then there’s the other election: Measures P, Q and R never appeared on Tuesday’s ballot. Those were a separate city-run special election, not part of the county’s normal November contest. Newport says ballot-production and protected-voter issues stopped it from going forward. The county has published its own timeline of the breakdown.
Now City Hall owes residents two plain answers: when will those measures actually get a vote, and what has this failed election effort cost taxpayers? A ballot measure shouldn’t need a sequel just to reach the ballot.
We’ll update the results only when the Registrar posts official numbers. For now, they’re leads, not certified outcomes.
Sources: Orange County Registrar: official live unofficial returns · Registrar’s reporting schedule · Election-night and updated totals as reported · County’s P/Q/R special-election timeline · City’s P/Q/R explanation
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