Late ballots hold up Stanislaus County results

More than 15,000 ballots remain to be counted from Tuesday's election, leaving murky the outcomes of a few races throughout Stanislaus County.

Todd Aaronson remains hopeful that he can overcome a 184-vote deficit to Modesto Councilman Dave Lopez in their four-man contest for District 3. Lopez says he's far enough ahead to claim victory.

Phil Moyer, 137 votes behind on Election Day, conceivably could catch John Gunderson in District 1.

Races for the Modesto City Schools board and the Sylvan Union School District also appear too close to call.

Contests for seats on the Patterson Irrigation and Empire Sanitary districts are teetering with just three votes and eight votes separating candidates, respectively.

By law, county Clerk-Recorder Lee Lundrigan's office must finish counting by Nov. 21. She declined to estimate whether her workers might complete the task before then.

"We're focused on getting those figured out because we understand the importance to candidates in very close races," Lundrigan said.

Of the uncounted ballots, more than 14,000 are late absentees, or mail votes received too late for the registrar's office to process Tuesday. Lundrigan said 700 provisional and 200 miscellaneous ballots await counting as well.

Unprocessed ballots account for nearly 30 percent of the 50,876 ballots cast in the election.

"Thirty percent is a huge amount," said political consultant Mike Lynch. Moyer would have to capture 58 percent of those remaining in his race to catch Gunderson, Lynch said, a steep climb, but not impossible.

Aaronson's deficit is harder to compute, Lynch said, because that race featured two other candidates; former Mayor Carmen Sabatino and Paul Tunison finished out of the running but would claim portions of uncounted votes.

Aaronson said he'll wait for a final tally.

Lopez, finishing his first term, said Wednesday: "The votes still to count are going to trend the same way. We're feeling pretty good. I'm taking it as a victory."

In Ceres, Councilman Guillermo Ochoa trailed two candidates in a race for two seats and would have to make up 91 votes to catch the second. Linda Ryno was 121 votes behind Eric Ing-werson in another contest.

Historically, final tally percentages have not been radically different from those posted on election night. But outcomes are getting harder to predict because numbers of uncounted ballots continue to grow as more people sign up to vote by mail.

County Supervisor Terry Withrow's June 2010 victory over Bill Lyons marked a turning point in predictability. Withrow trailed with 48.09 percent on the night of the election, but surged ahead when uncounted votes — accounting for 40 percent of the total — were tallied. He triumphed by

83 votes when counting finished more than two weeks later.

On Tuesday, 9,380 people voted at polls, less than 19 percent of all ballots cast.

The 50,876 total amounts to turnout of 22.4 percent across the county. Two voters each appeared at two of the county's 163 polling places, and 18 saw fewer than 15 voters.

Bee staff writer Garth Stapley can be reached at gstapley@modbee.com or (209) 578-2390.