[KHTS] – Anyone who wants to vote in the Santa Clarita City Council race April 8 should make sure they’re registered by midnight on Monday, according to an official with Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder’s Office.

State law mandates anyone who wants to vote in an election must register to do so 15 calendar days before the vote.

Those interested in registering online can click here to do so.

“There are 111,732 active registered voters in the city of Santa Clarita as of today,” according to Regina Ip of the media and communications division of the county’s Registrar’s Office.

In the last 10 years, Santa Clarita City Council ballot results reflect a turnout of about 14 percent to 17 percent of that figure, according data available at votesantaclarita.com.

In a little more than two weeks, 13 candidates will be vying for three open seats, which many are calling a critical election for Santa Clarita’s future.

The 13 City Council candidates are: Dante Acosta, Sandy Bull, Moazzem Chowdhury, Dennis Conn, Stephen Daniels, Alan Ferdman, Berta Gonzalez-Harper, Maria Gutzeit, Duane Harte, Marsha McLean, Gloria Mercado-Fortine, Laurene Weste and Paul Wieczorek.

KHTS AM-1220 will also be broadcasting the forum on air, in its entirety Saturday, March 22, at 9 a.m.

Some candidates have been campaigning for more than 12 months, with announcements coming as early as January 2013.

“What’s going to happen is, name recognition is going to be everything,” said Martin Saiz, a political science professor at California State University, Northridge, in a previous interview.

A number of factors play a role in this, not the least of which is the fact that people realize their vote will be cast among several thousand, Saiz said. Even in race that doesn’t have a high voter turnout, a single vote doesn’t make all that much difference.

“(Voters) will look for a fairly easy way to make a decision,” Saiz said. “What your neighbor recommends is important; information that’s easy to get is important. In a local campaign, word of mouth is really important.”

In the last City Council race in 2012, former Santa Clarita Mayor Laurie Ender became the first sitting mayor to be defeated in Santa Clarita’s nearly 25-year history. Two seats were available in that race.

City Councilman Bob Kellar finished well ahead of a 5-person pack with 7,045 votes. Boydston garnered 5,723, followed by Ender with 5,135.

In that election, 15,390 voters of 90,714 registered voters cast ballots, whether by mail or at the ballot box.

While the Santa Clarita City Council race is nonpartisan, here’s a breakdown of registered voters, within city limits, by party affiliations, as of Friday, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder’s Office.

The Republican Party has 45,041 registered voters; the Democratic Party has 37,226 registered voters; 17,912 declined to state party affiliation; 6,608 did not affiliate with a party; American Independent had 3,503; the Libertarian Party had 778 voters; the Green Party had 402; and the Peace and Freedom Party has 237 voters.