Smith and Riggins locked in tight Malibu council race Play

Updated partial vote totals in the Malibu City Council race show incumbent Doug Stewart in first place with 1,618 votes.

Challenger Danny Smith is 92 votes behind, with 1,526 votes. Incumbent Marianne Riggins is 31 votes behind Smith, with 1,489 votes.

The difference between second and third place is less than half a percent.

The fourth Malibu City Council candidate, Sam Dibaei got only 275 votes. Many voters said they viewed him as a fringe candidate with a message that was viewed by many as incoherent.

Those votes represent about 60 percent of the votes cast in Malibu. The next dump of results is expected around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

L.A. County reports it had counted 2.1 million ballots out of 5.8 million eligible voters. Seventy percent of the ballots tallied as of Tuesday night were vote-by-mail; 30 percent were cast in person.

Malibu voters were allowed to pick two of the four candidates. There was a campaign by some political activists to convince voters to cast only one vote — to single-shot Danny Smith — and to deny their second vote to either Riggins or Stewart.