Election results could take weeks

Sonoma County voters broke their own all-time participation record on Nov. 4 – but all that electoral enthusiasm means it’ll take a while to find out who won.
“We have to credit vote-by-mail with a certain amount of this,” county Registrar of Voters Janice Atkinson said Wednesday, saying the final count would likely be finished in slightly less than two weeks. “If we mail it, they will vote.”
Of Sonoma County’s 252,372 registered voters, Atkinson said 228,122 (90.39 percent) cast ballots either at the polls or by mail, eking past the previous record of 89.4 percent for the 2004 presidential election.
Atkinson said her staff was “probably about in the middle” of verifying some 151,589 vote-by-mail ballots – 121,291 of which were counted the night of the election – and said that number will grow slightly as workers continue the counting process. In addition, Atkinson said there are roughly 4,000 provisional ballots to be verified.
A number of close local races are hinging on the outcome. Just 1,105 votes currently separate incumbent Sonoma County First District Supervisor Valerie Brown from challenger Will Pier, with a respective tally of 20,891 to 19,786 (51.2 percent to 48.5 percent).
Of the four candidates vying for three seats on the Sonoma Valley Health Care District board, challengers Peter Hohorst and Madolyn Agrimonti respectively stand at 8,275 votes (30.4 percent) and 6,428 votes (23.6 percent). Incumbent Bill Boerum had 6,341 votes (23.3 percent) with challenger Bill Gurry placing a close fourth at 6,124 votes (22.5 percent).
For the Area 1 seat on the Sonoma County Board of Education, challenger Alexander Bantis apparently leads longtime incumbent John Musilli by 12,149 (50.0 percent) to 12,080 (49.7 percent).
In the race to fill three board vacancies for the Valley of the Moon Fire Protection District, incumbents Dawn Mittleman, Bill Norton and Ray Brunton seem to have defeated contender Elissa Wadleigh with respective totals of 4,459 (29.6 percent), 4,340 (28.8 percent), 3,974 (26.4 percent) and 2,251 (14.9 percent).
Atkinson said her staff took their regular weekend off but tallied ballots through Veterans Day – “It just seems wrong to take a holiday when we have all this work to do” – both through the automatic counter as well as manually.
“We hand-tally one percent of the precincts, plus one precinct for every contest not in the first one percent,” Atkinson said. “A couple of contests fall within the one-half of one-percent difference, and for those we have to (hand) tally 10 percent.”
In addition, she said there’s “a handful” of voters – 42, as of Wednesday afternoon – whose ballots will have to be ruled valid by a judge before they can be counted, since the county never received their voter registration forms.
“Out of 252,000 registered voters, that’s not a lot,” Atkinson said. “But to those 42 voters, it’s important.”