Still 6,000+ votes to count in Merced County’s election. Here are the numbers as of Tuesday
It’s been exactly one week since the election in Merced County, though the results are anything but final in some races.
The Merced County Registrars Office on Tuesday said they’ve counted 4,627 additional ballots, bringing the total count to 83,040.
Registrar Barbara Levey said there are still around 6,000 to 7,500 ballots left to count, depending on the provisional ballots and signature validations. “Hoping to count all , or substantially all, on Thursday of this week,” Levey said in an email to the Sun-Star.
Here are where the numbers stand in top races:
Los Banos mayor: Music teacher and longtime councilman Tom Faria leads former police officer Paul Llanez, 6,109 votes over 6,055 respectively. On election night Faria had led by 13 votes. He’s now ahead by 54 votes.
Merced City Council District 1: Activist Jesse Ornelas’ lead over longtime educator Joel Knox has decreased a bit from 86 to 74 votes. Ornelas has 1,395 to Knox’s 1,321 votes, respectively. Meanwhile, third candidate Louis Smith trails behind Ornelas and Knox with 423 votes.
Merced mayor: Matthew Serratto continues his stride toward the mayor’s seat, with 52.50% of the vote to Michael Belluomini’s 19.93%. The other challengers in the mayor’s race —Anthony Martinez and Monica Kay Villa — have 14.24% and 13.07% respectively.
Merced City Council District 3: Bertha Perez continues to lead Allen Brooks, 51.09% to 48.62% respectively.
Merced City Council District 5: Sarah Boyle maintains her lead over Jeremy Martinez, 52.26% to 47.32%
Merced County Board of Supervisor’s District 2: Josh Pedrozo has 10,606 votes over incumbet Lee Lor’s 9,494 — 52.77% to 47.23% respectively.
Livingston mayor: Juan Aguilar Jr. leads incumbent Gurpal S. Samra 2,584 votes to 1,309.
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.
Final results are due no later than Dec. 5, the registrar has said.
For the full list of local election results, visit the registrar’s website.
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Still 6,000+ votes to count in Merced County’s election. Here are the numbers as of Tuesday."
