SLO County has 47,000 more ballots to count. Here’s when to expect the next updates
San Luis Obispo County elections workers are still hard at work counting ballots, and the office plans to release updated vote results about once a week here on out, Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said.
“I don’t want to release results that only include a couple hundred ballots,” Cano told The Tribune in an email. “If there is a significant amount we can count multiple times in a week, we will, but I need to evaluate that on a day-to-day basis.
On Wednesday, the Elections Office will release another update on its website at about 4 p.m., she said. Cano estimated that next number would be about 10,000.
As of Friday, election staff had tallied a total of 71,696 ballots, pushing voter participation up to about 39.3%. In all, 182,291 ballots were sent out in this election.
About 47,320 ballots remain to be counted as of Tuesday — more than enough to swing close races for school board seats and the battle for District 2 on the Board of Supervisors, which Bruce Gibson now leads by 1,009 votes, 53.5% to 46.5%.
Bruce Gibson widens lead in District 2 race as SLO County releases new vote counts
Those numbers together would push turnout to around 63%. In June, the voter participation rate was notably lower at 48.6%.
During the primary election, the Elections Office released ballot count updates at varying intervals, sometimes as short as three days, other times as long as six.
The counting process during this election cycle, however, will be interrupted by a four-day Thanksgiving break.
Starting on Wednesday, the Elections Office also will begin conducting a 1% manual tally, which includes a hand count of 1% of the mail-in ballots received before Election Day, and 1% of the ballots cast at the polls, Cano said. That count takes about two and a half days.
“The process, in and of itself, is time consuming and isn’t something we can just hurry through,” Cano said.
She said it’s normal for elections workers to conduct the manual tally before they finish machine counting of all the vote-by-mail ballots.
