UKIAH, 11/8/18 — The votes have all been cast, but there’s still a lot of counting to do in the Mendocino County Elections Office. As of about 4:45 pm. today, there remain 16,730 absentee ballots, 1,011 provisional ballots and 268 conditional ballots, for a total of around 18,009 ballots left to be tallied. So far, only absentee ballots and ballots cast at the polls have actually been tallied, amounting to 15,819 ballots. That means that on 46.8% of ballots have actually been tallied — and that certain close races in Mendocino Co. could still flip.
(Check out full coverage of the election results that have already been tallied here)
Ballots sent through the mail have until tomorrow, Friday, to arrive at the county’s elections office — meaning at a handful, or couple dozen might arrive tomorrow.
Because of the large percentage of ballots that remain to be counted, it’s technically mathematically possible that most of the races could flip from the current front-runner. However, this is, in actuality, extremely unlikely. Because the votes that have been counted so far are early absentee ballots and ballots directly filled out and cast at the polls, the counted-ballots represent a pretty good cross-section of Mendocino County voters, and it’s not expected that the remaining ballots will change the results much.
Still, in close races like Measure K in Covelo, certain school board races, and for the last-place seat on the Fort Bragg and Ukiah city councils, enough votes remain untallied to change the outcome of those races.
Additionally, there are a couple dozen votes that have not been counted because poll workers have deemed the signature on the ballot to not match with the signature on the voter registration rolls. In California, if these two signatures don’t match the the voter is informed by mail and given the opportunity to prove that they are indeed the person who cast the ballot. The election’s office is sending out notifications for the couple dozen voters in Mendocino County whose signatures didn’t match, giving them a couple weeks to correct the issue before invalidating those ballots.
Here is the press release from the election’s office:
BALLOTS LEFT TO BE COUNTED
NOVEMBER 6, 2018 STATEWIDE GENERAL ELECTION
Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Susan M. Ranochak announced that as with every other election, there are ballots left to be processed as part of the official canvass. Mendocino County has 16,730 Vote By Mail ballots to process, and 1,011 Provisional ballots to review and process.
Of the outstanding ballots left to count: the 3rd Supervisor District has 3,288; and the 5th Supervisor District has 3,210 ballots to process and count. The City of Ukiah has 2,900; The City of Willits has 776; and the City of Fort Bragg has 1,300 ballots left to process and count.
Per State law, we have 30 days to complete the canvass. The Statement of Vote, which breaks down results by precinct, will be available at that time.
Here is our election night coverage with the full ballot results:
