Thousands Of Local Ballots Still To Be Counted After Election Day
Sonora, CA — Tuesday’s initial Election Day results give a strong indication as to who will win the local races in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, but there are still thousands of ballots to count.
“We received about 1,500 ballots from the Vote Centers and Drop Boxes that we need to count. We also have about 400 ballots that were from the drop-box at the election office counter (on Tuesday). So, that’s about 2,000, and then whatever I get in the mail.”
To this point, 13,756 ballots have been tabulated in Tuolumne County, which equates to a 39% voter turnout. Of the remaining ballots to count, they will be split between the five supervisor districts, so Bautista does not anticipate it to make much of a difference in the final results.
In District Five, Jaron Brandon has a strong 59-40% advantage over Arthur Schmidt and District Four, Steve Griefer has a commanding 78-21% lead over Kathryn Saari.
The closest race is District One Supervisor, where no candidate reached the 50% threshold to win outright, so the top two vote-getters will move on to the General Election. Mike Holland leads with 35% and Mark Plummer is second with 29%. Third place Matt Hawkins is 87 votes behind Plummer at 26%.
The Sonora City Council has three seats, and the top vote-getters are Ann Segerstrom 30%, Stephen Opie 27%, Bess Levine 24%, and Darren Duez 17%. Duez trails third place Levine by 124 votes.
In Calaveras County, Clerk and Recorder Rebecca Turner says, “There are roughly 4,500 vote-by-mail ballots yet to be counted. These ballots were picked up from drop boxes, vote centers, and received through the mail (yesterday).”
Both offices will continue to accept ballots over the next week that are postmarked by March 5th.
Calaveras County has counted 11,561 ballots to this point, which is a 36% voter turnout.
Tuolumne County is planning to have the remaining ballots counted in the next couple of days, possibly as early as today. Calaveras, which has a higher amount, plans to have them tabulated by Friday.
Click here to view the latest results for the various races.
