Saturday Election Update: Merced County vote count continues, as candidates await results
Races throughout Merced County continued to shape up Saturday night as the Merced County Registrar’s Office updated election results with an additional 6,584 tabulated ballots.
Another update to elections results is anticipated on Monday, a Saturday news release from Merced County Registrar of Voters Barbara Levey said.
“Signature verification processes on Vote By Mail (VBM) envelopes received on Election Day, as well as VBM envelopes received timely since Election Day, continued today and have been completed on almost all VBM except on those that remain challenged due to a missing or unmatched signature,” Levey stated in the release
In Merced County 74,340 ballots have been cast, according to the Registrar’s Office.
Where the races stand
In one of the tightest races, the Los Banos mayor’s race, Tom Faria had earlier led Paul Llanez by just 13 votes on election night. The lead is now 31 votes, with Faria receiving 4,578 votes compared to Llanez’s 5,547 with 11,165 ballots counted in Los Banos.
The close race in Merced City Council District 1 flipped on Friday night. As of Thursday, Joel Knox held his lead over Jesse F. Ornelas — but only by six votes.
That switched Friday with Ornelas’ 1,135 votes outnumbering Knox’s 1,109 — a difference of 26 ballots cast in Ornelas’ favor. Ornelas’ lead stretched to 43 votes on Saturday with Orneles’ 1,263 votes to Knox’s 1,220.
In Merced City Council District 3, Bertha A. Perez still led Allen Brooks. After Saturday’s count, Perez leads 1,550 to Brooks’ 1,495 votes..
In Merced City Council District 5, Sarah Boyle leads with 1,965 (53.17%) over Jeremy Martinez 1,718 (46.48%).
In the Merced mayor’s race, Matt Serratto still maintains a significant lead with 11,679 votes, which accounts for 52.11%. Michael Belluomini’s is second in the four-person race with 4,569 (20.39%) votes. Anthony Martinez and Monica Kay Villa trail far behind in the race, with 3,156 and 2,949 votes respectively.
In the runoff for Merced County Supervisor District 2, Josh Pedrozo on Saturday gained more ground against Lee Lor, putting him ahead of the incumbent supervisor by 841 votes. Pedrozo now has 52.34% (9,422 votes) compared to Lor’s 47.66% (8,581 votes).
In the Livingston mayor’s race, Juan Aguilar Jr. leads incumbent Gurpal S. Samra 2,070 votes to 1,139.
All eligible voters this year were sent mail-in ballots in an effort to promote physical distancing while voting amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. Ballots that were postmarked by Election Day are still valid.
When processing ballots, each signature must be verified. If the signature doesn’t match the signature on file, the voter is notified. Voter participation history is updated for every voter who turned in a ballot. Every mail-in envelope is opened, the ballot is extracted and flattened. Each ballot is fed through the high speed ballot scanning equipment to tabulate them.
California law provides that vote-by-mail ballots may be accepted through Friday, Nov. 20 provided that they are postmarked on or before Nov. 3, 2020.
This story was originally published November 7, 2020 at 6:43 PM.
