Ballot Counting Continues In Temecula Valley USD Recall Election

TEMECULA, CA — As ballots continued to be counted Thursday in the June 4 Temecula Valley Unified School District Special Recall Election, the latest results were tight.

TVUSD Trustee Area 4 voters who cast "yes" ballots were ahead of "no" votes by about 2 percentage points, according to a 6 p.m. update from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office.

Trustee Area 4 voters were asked a single yes-or-no ballot question: "Shall JOSEPH WAYNE KOMROSKY be recalled (removed) from the office of Governing Board Member, Temecula Valley Unified School District, Trustee Area 4?"

The Thursday evening update showed "yes" tallies at 4,905 votes or 51.13% of ballots counted, while "no" votes were 4,688 or 48.87%.

To access the latest election results, click here.

Counting is not over. An estimated 140 vote-by-mail ballots and 50 conditional voter registration ballots remain to be counted. In addition, any vote-by-mail ballots delivered by the postal service with a postmark on or before Election Day and received up to seven days (June 11, 2024) after June 4 will be verified and counted.

Election results will continue to be updated daily until all ballots are counted, according to the Registrar.

Election results are unofficial until June 20, 2024, when the Registrar certifies the final tally. The results are then forwarded to the Secretary of State.

One Temecula Valley PAC led efforts to recall Komrosky. Trustee Jennifer Wiersma and former Trustee Danny Gonzalez were initially targeted by the group as well, but those efforts were dropped. Gonzalez resigned his post in December. His Trustee Area 2 seat remains vacant.

Efforts to recall the trio started not long after they took office. The three were each elected in November 2022 to a four-year term on the TVUSD board following support from Inland Empire Family PAC, which works to "stop the indoctrination of our children by placing candidates on school boards who will fight for Christian and conservative values."

Critics, including national organizations, blasted the three trustees over their critical race theory ban; their controversial critical race theory "panel" that many TVUSD teachers dubbed "indoctrination camp"; their censoring of instruction about California's gay rights movement; their attempted defiance of state education code; their firing of the district superintendent; the hiring of their own team of attorneys at taxpayers' expense to defend against ongoing lawsuits over their actions; their ban on pride and other flags; and their mandate that educators report to parents about transgender students.

Their actions cost the district in legal fees and caught the ire of state leaders.

Komrosky gave a last plea to Trustee Area 4 voters on his Instagram page in the hours leading up to Tuesday's election, saying, "Since I’ve been elected by the majority of the community, I’ve no greater honor in my entire life than in protecting your children’s innocence. I’ve done this by reducing any social activism in our school district so that we can return to a more common sense back to basics educational framework.

"To that end, some of the major things I’ve done for was voted in a parental notification policy, voted a USA & CA flag only policy, and prohibited pervasive: pornography, erotica, obscenity, vulgarity, & profanity in any of our educational material, whether it’s core curriculum, supplemental material, or library," he continued. "I’ve done all of this so that your children have a safe and excellent education. While that happened, I’ve also advocated and worked with district staff to make sure our reading, writing, and math scores are significantly raised."