Thirty-six percent of OC Ballots remaining to be counted

 

More than 182,000 ballots remain to be counted from yesterday’s primary election in Orange County. According to the OC Registrar of Voters website there are 166,451 vote-by-mail ballots, 11,196 provisional ballots, and 4,414 election day paper ballots remaining.

According to the Registrar of Voters (ROV), “the number of ballots to count is completely normal,” said spokesman Brett Rowley. “There were good number of ballots received in the final days and a large number of ballots dropped off at the poll sites yesterday.”

Overall, the ballots remaining after the election night tally do not affect the results. But in close races, the remaining ballots can have a big impact on who wins when all the votes are tallied.

For example, in 2008 Robin Marcario was the #2 vote getter for Garden Grove City Council on election night. Marcario was ahead by 361 votes. But over the next few days of counting Marcario fell behind, ultimately losing the contest to Councilman Andrew Do by 1,169 votes. In the City of Westminster, Troung “Tyler” Diep was trailing Penny Loomer for a council seat, but in the end surpassed Loomer by 49 votes. Two years earlier the same thing happened to Councilman Harry Krebs, who ultimately lost his election bid to Bruce Broadwater and Dina Nguyen.

So what this means is that in the very close contests such as the Republican 70th Assembly District race, and the Board of Education, District 2 contest, the final tally may end up quite different than it is right now. Rowley reports that there are 19,176 ballots in play in the 70th Assembly District, and that number could rise al little based upon mail ballots dropped off at precincts across the county. There are only 879 votes separating front runner Don Wagner and Steven Choi. I’m still waiting on the numbers for the Board of Education 2nd district race. In that contest, chalenger David L. Boyd is only ahead of Trustee Alexandria Coronado by 891 votes. I’ll bring the number of outstanding ballots in that race to you as soon as I hear.