The race for the 12th Senate District seat could be a photo
finish as Democrat Rusty Areias clings to a slim 136-vote lead over
Republican Jeff Denham with an estimated 14,146 ballots not
counted.
The race for the 12th Senate District seat could be a photo finish as Democrat Rusty Areias clings to a slim 136-vote lead over Republican Jeff Denham as election departments in San Benito, Monterey, Stanislaus and Madera counties begin processing an estimated 14,146 absentee and provisional ballots not counted on election night.
Areias’ 226-vote lead from Tuesday’s election shrank by about 90 votes in some of the early tabulation of the uncounted ballots. Areias has 61,652 votes to Denham’s 61,516, the Secretary of State’s office said this morning.
Observers from both campaigns and the state Democratic and Republican parties have been camped out in the San Benito County elections office since Thursday morning to watch the arduous process of hand-checking each of the 2,128 absentee and provisional ballots.
“I’m just making sure that everyone who can legally vote gets the chance to do so,” said observer William Sanchez, who’s pulling for an Areias win.
The race for the newly formed 12th Senate District has garnered a lot of attention on the state level as Republicans try to hold on to their power base in the state Senate.
“We’ve got a lot of tight races left,” said observer Jerry Smith of the state Senate Republicans. “We’re also watching the count in Stanislaus and Monterey county.”
The race has drawn attention to a seldom-seen part of the electoral process.
“This is part of the democratic process in action that many people don’t realize even happens,” said Ben Davidian, an attorney for the state Republican Party.
It also highlights the strict adherence to the state elections code that election workers have to follow, he said.
“Some people don’t know that if you don’t fill out the proper information on your absentee ballot, it can be (thrown out),” Davidian said.
During the counting process, election workers had to throw out several provisional ballots from people who moved into the county from Santa Clara County but never registered locally. Election officials also had to discount a number of absentee ballots.
“There were 110 absentee ballots we had to reject as of now,” County Clerk John Hodges said.
He said the number is not unusual because every year many absentee voters wait until it’s too late to mail in their ballots.
By law, absentee ballots have to be received by the elections office by the day of the election or they will not be counted.
“Putting that ballot in the mail on the last day just doesn’t do it,” Hodges said. “They have to be in hand by 8 o’clock on election night.”
Absentee voters can drop their ballots off at the elections office or they can take them to any of the polling places around the county.
“We have about 100 or so ballots every year that can’t be counted because they are mailed in late,” Hodges said.
Of the more than 6,000 absentee ballots mailed to local voters for Tuesday’s election, 3,737 were turned in to the elections department, election officials said.
With just under 200 ballots left to count, Hodges said he hopes to have some more definite results available by Monday morning.
