Costa moves into lead, more ballots to count

Republican Johnny Tacherra is in Washington, D.C., at the orientation for new members of Congress, but he is no longer in the lead for the 16th Congressional District seat.

Fresno County updated its vote count Wednesday afternoon, and incumbent Fresno Democrat Jim Costa – behind in his re-election bid since election night more than a week ago – took a slim, 86-vote lead over Tacherra.

Headed into Wednesday, Tacherra had a 741-vote lead, but the Fresno County update added 1,708 votes to Costa’s total. In the meantime, Tacherra added just 881 votes. The difference pushed Costa from the 741-vote deficit to the 86-vote lead.

With Wednesday’s update, Fresno County officials finished the final 10,300 mail ballots from the Nov. 4 election.

Now, the only thing remaining are provisional ballots – 1,505 in Merced County, 722 in Madera County and an unknown number in Fresno County.

Fresno has around 10,100 provisional ballots still to count, but it is unknown how many are from the 16th Congressional District part of the county.

This story was originally published November 12, 2014 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Costa moves into lead, more ballots to count."