The count inches forward
Registrar of Voters releases updated numbers as counting continues and mail-in ballots trickle in
The Sonoma County Registrar of Voters released updated numbers this afternoon for the November 8 election.
For the Sebastopol City Council election, the order of the candidates is holding steady and the update made little difference. If the winners for the three open seats on the council were declared today (which it won’t be), they'd be McLewis, Zollman and Maurer. Here’s the updated count as of 4:19 pm, Nov. 11.
Jill McLewis 22.08% (1,030)
Stephen Zollman 20.64% (963)
Sandra Maurer 20.11% (938)
Oliver Dick 18.69% (872)
Dennis Colthurst 18.48% (862)
In the West Sonoma County Union High School District race, Ramirez widened her lead by about half a percentage point over Nagle.
Debbie Ramirez 54.69% (6,046)
David Patrick Nagle 45.31% (5,001)
Here are the updated numbers for the Sebastopol Union School District election:
Lisa Bauman 29.81% (1,741)
Deborah Drehmel 27.99% (1,635)
Elizabeth Smith 24.09% (1,407)
Joseph Pogar Jr. 18.11% (1,058)
Which votes have been counted thus far?
“So far all the early voting at vote centers and ballots cast at vote centers on Election Day have all been counted,” said Wendy Hudson, Chief Deputy Registrar of Voters for Sonoma County. “The election night results also included signature-approved vote-by-mail ballots that were prepped for tallying as of 5 pm on Election Day. We still have ballot drop boxes picked up on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to process."
She said the Registrar of Voters office will also continue to count mail-in ballots, postmarked on or before election day, as they come in through Tuesday, November 15.
Prognostications
No newspaper wants to have a “Dewey Beats Truman” moment, so we’re not calling the city council race quite yet because it seems so close.
But some local political watchers aren’t so hesitant. Sebastopol’s former mayor and city council member Ken Foley saw the updated numbers this way:
“Nobody on the bottom is making a move to the top,” he said. “I don't expect the top three to change — though there may be some movement within the group — but I think those three are going to council.”
Council watcher and math professor Kyle Falbo agrees. "Under the huge assumption that the current vote count is a representative sample, I don't expect the percentages to change by more than 1.5% in either direction for any candidate beyond what we currently see," he said.