UKIAH, CA., 11/11/26 — On election night, Robert Bazzani was in fifth place for Ukiah City Council, 124 votes behind Mayor Susan Sher. A week later, he trails her by five votes for the final council seat, and the count isn’t over.
Sher has 1,754 votes and Bazzani 1,749 in the results Mendocino County posted Tuesday at 9:34 a.m. Eight candidates are running for three seats, and Sher is in third place. Bazzani gained 732 votes in Tuesday’s count and Sher gained 613.
John Strangio went from fourth to first in Tuesday’s count, with 1,995 votes. Vice Mayor Juan V. Orozco is second with 1,934. Councilmember Mari Rodin, who was third on election night, is fifth with 1,720, 29 votes behind Bazzani. Matt Froneberger has 1,658.
Sher, Orozco and Rodin are the three incumbents in the race. Strangio, Bazzani and Froneberger are challengers, along with Sean K. White and Mia L. Uribe.
The county expects to post its next results Friday by 5 p.m., according to its report on ballots left to count. That report lists 8,751 ballots still to process across the county and doesn’t break the number down by city.
The county’s only estimate for Ukiah has already been passed. On Nov. 5, it said the Ukiah council race had about 1,600 ballots left to count. Tuesday’s count added 1,989 Ukiah ballots, 389 more than that estimate. The county hasn’t published a new number for Ukiah. The city’s total is now 4,813 ballots, or 53.13% of its 9,059 registered voters.
Most of the 8,751 ballots still to process are mail ballots: 6,418 that arrived on or before Election Day and 1,119 that came in over the seven days after. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they reached the elections office by Nov. 10. The other 1,214 are provisional ballots. The state says those are counted after elections officials confirm the voter is registered in the county and hasn’t already voted.
The report lists another 176 ballots as left to “cure,” the county’s word for a problem the voter can still fix. Those include envelopes that weren’t signed and envelopes with a signature the office couldn’t match. The county has asked voters who got a cure letter to return their paperwork as soon as possible.
The results are unofficial, and the county says it can’t certify them until 30 days after the election.
The elections office’s number is 707-234-6819.