Tuesday last day to vote for Modesto mayor; winner may be known that night
Modesto could have a new mayor by Tuesday night, Feb. 2.
That is the last day ballots can be cast in the runoff election for mayor between former Councilman Doug Ridenour and former Modesto City Schools board member Sue Zwahlen.
The two are facing each other because Zwahlen finished first and Ridenour second in the November election among eight candidates for mayor, and no candidate received a majority of the vote. Zwahlen received 23.8 percent; Ridenour received 19.4 percent.
The runoff is being conducted by mail; ballots were mailed Jan. 4.
The Stanislaus County election office will count ballots sent by mail as long as they have a postmark dated no later than Feb. 2 and the office receives them no later than Friday. Registrar of Voters Donna Linder said voters who drop their ballots in the mail need to do so before the post office’s pickup time to ensure the ballots have the Feb. 2 postmark.
Ballots can be dropped off at the election office in downtown Modesto from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. Voters also can get replacement ballots there. The office is at 1021 I St.
Ballots can be placed in drop boxes at several locations throughout the city. Drop box locations were included in the ballots mailed to voters and can be found at www.stanvote.com/pdf/Dropboxesforwebsite.pdf.
Linder said her office expects to release results shortly after voting ends at 8 p.m. Tuesday and will have its next update Thursday evening.
Modesto could know who its next mayor is Tuesday evening as long as the results between Zwahlen and Ridenour are not too close.
Linder said as of Friday her office had received 26,564 of the more than 115,000 ballots it had issued to voters. That put turnout at about 23 percent. That low turnout is in line with previous mayoral runoff elections.
That is far below the 77.1 percent turnout for the Nov. 3 mayoral election in which 88,322 voters cast ballots. That was the first year Modesto had moved its City Council and mayoral elections from odd to even years to increase turnout.
But the change did not address the problem of low voter turnout during mayoral runoffs, which occur frequently because no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the election.
Zwahlen, 66, is a retired emergency room registered nurse and served on the Modesto City Schools board from 2009 to 2017. Ridenour, 69, is a retired Modesto police sergeant and just finished his first term as a city councilman. He ran for mayor rather than seek re-election.
This story was originally published February 1, 2021 at 2:13 PM.
