Leno keeps slim lead in mayoral vote count

Former state Sen. Mark Leno retained his razor-thin lead in the San Francisco mayor’s race after the latest round of ranked-choice votes were counted Friday. Leno now leads Supervisor London Breed by 144 votes, 50.04 percent to 49.96 percent.

Leno’s lead has been steadily dwindling: On Thursday, Leno was ahead by 255 votes, down from 1,121 the day before.

After trailing Breed by around 10 percentage points for most of election night, Leno pulled ahead in the early hours of Wednesday morning after ranked-choice votes were tallied. Leno has consistently taken on about 77 percent of Supervisor Jane Kim’s second-place votes under San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system. Breed has maintained a firm

grip on first-place votes.

The number of ballots processed by the San Francisco Department of Elections has increased each day. The department processed 19,475 votes since its last report Thursday. The day before, 8,065 ballots had been counted. There are still about 64,900 ballots to process.

The department is releasing daily updates on the results of the mayor’s race as it sorts uncounted ballots through the weekend.

If either candidate wants a recount in the close race, they’d have to pay for it themselves, though they would get to decide what method the department uses, elections director John Arntz said. The most expensive option — a hand count — would cost more than $1 million, he said.

And the city has a rather low-tech solution for picking a winner in the event of a tie in the mayor’s race.

Arntz said that in the event of a dead-heat, “we put 10 of each (candidate’s) name in a container, a hat — whatever — and then we have someone from the public pull (a name), and that’s how we decide the tie.”

Other updated results from the election show that “yes” votes for Proposition C, which would increase taxes on commercial buildings by 3.5 percent and on warehouses by 1 percent, increased to 1,196 — 50.34 percent to 49.66 percent — from a 559vote lead the day before.

San Francisco has 478,113 registered voters. Citywide voter turnout is estimated to have been over 50 percent.