Thousands of ballots yet to be counted

There are still more than 15,000 ballots to be processed in Mendocino County, local Elections officials reported Friday.

In a press release posted to Facebook, Registrar of Voters Katrina Bartolomie reported the afternoon of March 8 that her office still had “14,733 Vote By Mail ballots to process, and 588 Conditional Provisional/Provisional ballots to review and process.”

As for the outstanding ballots remaining in the “hot contests,” Bartolomie said there are 3,155 ballots left to count in the 1st District Mendocino County Supervisor race; 2,414 ballots left to count in the 2nd District supervisor race, and 3,194 in the 4th District Supervisor race.

According to the latest results posted Wednesday morning, Madeline Cline had a solid lead over the other three candidates hoping to win the First District Mendocino County Supervisor seat currently held by Glenn McGourty: Cline with 871 votes (58.93 percent), Gaska with 377 votes (23.27 percent), Mockel with 142 votes (9.61 percent) and Shattuck with 121 votes (8.19 percent).

If Cline maintains her lead and claims more than 50 percent of the votes, she will earn the supervisor seat and there will be no need for a runoff race.

Also in early results, Second District Mendocino County Supervisor Maureen Mulheren had a slight lead over challenger Jacob Brown, with the latest report showing Mulheren with 541 votes (51.09 percent), and Brown with 518 (48.91 percent).

If Mulheren hangs onto her lead and earns at least 50 percent of the votes, there will not be a runoff race for her seat and she will earn another term.

As for the 4th District seat, which incumbent Dan Gjerde opted not to run for again, the latest results had Bernie Novell taking a commanding lead with 1,559 votes (81.20 percent) to the 361 votes cast for Georgina Avila-Gorman.

As for when more results will be reported, Bartolomie notes that “for the past six years, we have update our count (Unofficial Results) approximately two weeks after Election Day. Per state law, we have 30 days to complete the canvass.”

As for ballots that may have be mailed on or before Election Day, Bartolomie said they “need to be mailed by Election Day (March 5) and received in our office within seven days after the Election (March 12). We would like them all postmarked, but not all mail is postmarked. What we've done in the past is, as long as we receive the ballot by March 12 we count it, unless it has a postmark after March 5. If there is no postmark, we consider it mailed by Election Day, since there is no way to determine when exactly it was mailed.”