Two local incumbents have not filed. County filing closes at 5 p.m. today.

County filing for the November 3 ballot closes at 5 p.m. today at the Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana. The city's own window closed yesterday. What the paperwork shows this morning is not what it showed on Monday.

Two incumbents whose seats are up have filed nothing. Michael Maynard does not appear in the Rossmoor Community Services District contest as a candidate, and Marlys Davidson does not appear in the Los Alamitos Unified contest for Trustee Area 1. The Registrar has flagged both offices for the five-day extension.

Everything below comes from the Registrar's candidate log, printed at 5:58 p.m. Thursday.¹ A full day of filing has run since. This is a snapshot of a window that is still open, not a result.

Rossmoor went from one candidate to four

As of the log we reported from on Tuesday, the Rossmoor contest had one name on it and nobody qualified. It now has four names and two qualified candidates for two seats.

Jo Shade, the board president, filed on August 4 and qualified the same day. Her ballot designation is "Incumbent." Jody L. Roubanis filed and qualified on August 5, with the designation "Professor." Roubanis did not appear in the 2022 or 2024 fields.²³

Maynard is listed in the log only as a sitting incumbent. The Registrar has not issued him a declaration of candidacy or a candidate statement. He won this seat in 2022 as the top vote-getter with 2,058 votes.²

That absence is what triggers the extension. Where an eligible incumbent does not file, the window reopens for five more days, through Wednesday, August 12, for everyone except that incumbent.⁴ Maynard cannot use it to change his mind. Anyone else in Rossmoor can use it to enter the race.

Winners take office December 4.

The board they are running for is a member short and a budget short

Whoever wins in November joins a board that has spent the summer unable to agree on its own spending.

The district went into the current fiscal year without an adopted budget. At its July meeting the four remaining directors split 2-2, with Tony DeMarco and Maynard against and Shade and Nathan Searles in favor, and a tied vote adopts nothing.⁵

The disagreement is about what the district pays its general manager. Sharon Landers is paid about $140,000 a year plus benefits, against a predecessor who made under $100,000. Insurance costs are up about 20 percent, on a district budget of roughly $2 million. DeMarco said the district is "just a bit top heavy" and that "we are not a city." Maynard called the general manager's position "the elephant in the room," telling Landers directly that "we are a top-heavy organization with your position." Shade answered that "it's all about balance" and that "we're all here for the same reason." Landers said she would be willing to renegotiate her agreement.⁵

At a special meeting on July 28 the board put DeMarco back on the Budget Committee and gave Maynard the Personnel and Contracts Administration Committee, which is to say it handed the two directors who voted no the two committees that would write the next version.⁵

The board is down to four because Mary Ann Remnet resigned effective July 12. She had sold her Rossmoor home in March and voted remotely from Italy before stepping down, which drew complaints from residents.⁵ Her seat runs to December 2028 and is not on any ballot. The board took letters of interest through July 31 and interviews candidates for it at its meeting on Tuesday, August 11.⁶

So Rossmoor will get two directors by election and one by appointment, and the appointment happens first.

The rest of the county ballot

Los Alamitos Unified, Trustee Area 1. Marlys Davidson has not filed. Anne Mulhearn qualified on August 5 with the designation "Community Volunteer" and is so far the only candidate. This contest is flagged for the extension through August 12.¹

Los Alamitos Unified, Trustee Area 3. Board president Diana D. Hill qualified on August 5 and is unopposed. No extension applies.¹

Rossmoor/Los Alamitos Area Sewer District. Two seats, two candidates, both qualified. David A. Boyer qualified July 15 and John L. Stea qualified July 22, both with the designation "Incumbent." No extension applies.¹

North Orange County Community College District, Area 1. This one changed on Thursday. Incumbent Barbara Dunsheath qualified on July 20 and until then had no filed opponent. Rama R. Maline qualified on August 6 with the designation "State Prosecutor/Professor." The seat is now contested.¹

The city has published nothing

Los Alamitos runs its own council filing through the City Clerk rather than the county, and none of it appears in the Registrar's log.

The city's election page confirms two seats in Districts 4 and 5 and a nomination window that ran July 13 through August 6.⁷ It does not name a single candidate. It does not say whether Shelley Hasselbrink in District 4 or Emily Hibard in District 5 filed, and it does not say whether either district went into extension.

The gap is a practical one. These are the only local seats where a resident cannot find out who is running without calling City Hall, and City Hall is closed on Fridays. The county publishes a running log as a PDF anyone can download. The city has posted nothing equivalent.

The term limit question has an answer

Measure X, which Los Alamitos voters passed in November 2024, rewrote that limit for by-district elections. It caps service at three consecutive terms representing any one district or combination of districts, defines a term as 731 or more consecutive days of service, and bars a member who hits the cap from returning for 365 days. It also says, in the text voters approved, that the section applies prospectively and "shall apply to the terms of office commencing with the election in November 2024," and that terms commenced and years served before November 2024 "shall not be included when calculating the number of terms or years served."⁸

Hasselbrink's earlier service therefore does not count against her. The charter's term cap does not bar her from running in November.

This bears on the extension. It exists only where an eligible incumbent declines to file, so District 4 can go into extension if she sat out, and a resident who wants to run there may still have until Wednesday. Whether she filed is the thing nobody outside City Hall can currently check.

Dates to keep

• Today, 5 p.m. County filing closes at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana.
• Tuesday, August 11. Rossmoor's board interviews applicants for the Remnet vacancy.
• Wednesday, August 12. The five-day extension closes for Rossmoor and for school board Area 1, and for any other office where an eligible incumbent sat out.
• Thursday, August 13. The Secretary of State's randomized alphabet drawing sets the order names appear on the ballot.⁹
• Thursday, August 27. The certified list of candidates is published.⁹
• Monday, October 5. Ballots are mailed to every active registered voter.
• Monday, October 19. Registration deadline. After that, conditional same-day registration applies through Election Day.
• Saturday, October 24. Vote centers open. Orange County has no assigned polling places, so any vote center in the county works.
• Tuesday, November 3. Election Day, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

You can check your registration, see your own ballot and find drop boxes at ocvote.gov/vlt. You can register or update your registration at registertovote.ca.gov, and track your mail ballot at california.ballottrax.net.

Under an extension, the last day to enter a Rossmoor or school board race is next Wednesday. If you have been waiting to see whether anyone would run, that is the window.

How we checked this

Candidate names, ballot designations, issue dates, filing dates and qualification dates come from the Registrar of Voters' Contest/Candidate Proof List for the November 3 election, read directly from the published PDF rather than from a summary. The two sections of that log were printed at 5:57 and 5:58 p.m. on August 6. Filing remained open all day Friday, so a candidate who filed today will not appear in it.

The extension flag is the Registrar's own marking on each contest, not our inference. We have asked the Registrar to confirm that the flag on the Rossmoor contest reflects Maynard's non-filing specifically.

Vote totals are certified statements of vote, not election-night counts. Quotations and vote counts from Rossmoor's July board meetings come from contemporaneous local coverage rather than approved minutes, which are not yet published for those meetings; where the district's minutes later differ, we will correct to the minutes.

We have asked Michael Maynard and Marlys Davidson whether they intend to sit out, and we have asked Jody L. Roubanis and Anne Mulhearn why they are running. This story will be updated with their answers and will say so if any of them declines.

Sources

1. Orange County Registrar of Voters, "Contest/Candidate Proof List," General Election 11/3/2026, contests 3151, 3153, 6021, 6211 and 3034; printed 8/6/2026 at 5:57:04 p.m. and 5:58:49 p.m. ↩
2. Orange County Registrar of Voters, certified statement of vote, November 8, 2022, Rossmoor Community Services District Director, pp. 1862-1864. ↩
3. Orange County Registrar of Voters, certified statement of vote, November 5, 2024, pp. 1249-1252. ↩
4. California Elections Code section 10225, extension of the nomination period where an incumbent does not file. ↩
5. The Event News Enterprise, David N. Young, "Rossmoor Board down to four directors, splits after tense budget discussion over GM's compensation," August 6, 2026. ↩
6. Sun Newspapers, "Rossmoor dir. resigns, applications being accepted to fill vacancy," July 23, 2026. ↩
7. City of Los Alamitos, November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election and City Council, both retrieved August 7, 2026. ↩
8. City of Los Alamitos, Measure X, November 5, 2024, full text, impartial analysis and arguments, amending Sections 501 and 501A of Article V of the city charter. ↩
9. California Secretary of State, key dates and deadlines, General Election November 3, 2026. ↩