Nearly two out of every three San Benito County voters cast a ballot by mail this election season, continuing a trend seen around the country.
Clerk-Auditor-Recorder Joe Paul Gonzalez took a break from ballot counting Tuesday night to tell BenitoLink that the initial vote-by-mail ballots that were counted and posted by 8 p.m. were a good indicator of how candiates and measure would do. “That trend pretty much stays within a tight range,” he said in the 10 o’clock hour. “I don’t expect results to change drastically.”
One race that was too close to call all night was the Hollister District 2 City Council race between Mickie Solorio Luna and Victoria Montoya, who traded spots as the leading vote-getter throughout the night. Gonzalez called it “a cliffhanger.”
Officials had predicted voter turnout between 40 percent and 50 percent in recent days, though Gonzalez said it was looking like the final percentage would be closer to 55 percent. He attributed the uptick to interest in local measures. During the last general election in 2010, local turnout was 65 percent in an election year that featured a hotly-contested gubernatorial race between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.
“This time, it was not a close contest expected for he gubernatorial race, and it was 30 percent turnout in the primary this year, so we were thinking it was gonna be in the lower 30s,” Gonzalez said. “It’s significantly higher.”
While some contests appeared over as the ballot counting geared down, Gonzalez wasn’t ready to declare any races over as more than 2,000 vote-by-mail ballots were dropped off at polling places and at the elections office on Tuesday. “Those ballots take a lot of time to process,” he said, noting that it could be the end of next week before they are all counted.