The San Francisco Department of Elections just dropped the results of another 1,679 ballots, bringing the total of processed ballots to 390,437, or 74.76 percent of the electorate.
There are approximately 19,500 ballots left to count. Those include some 14,800 provisional ballots, which may or may not be accepted.
Even though the count has been going slow so far this week, John Arntz, the director of the Department of Elections, told Mission Local on Monday that they will “have most of the remaining ballot cards processed and reported this week.”
San Francisco is seeing far lower turnout this year than in 2020, with the total tracking to be about 77.8 percent, maximum. The average San Francisco turnout in a presidential year, going back 108 years, is 77 percent. The 2020 turnout broke 86 percent.
All eyes are now on the only two remaining contested races: District 11 supervisor, and the fourth and last seat on the Board of Education:
In District 11, Chyanne Chen kept her lead, with 11,863 votes to her moderate opponent Michael Lai’s 11,658 — a gap of just 205 votes. Chen, who only gained three votes yesterday, lost five during today’s drop. The race is still tight.
A part of Chen’s lead can be attributed to Ernest “EJ” Jones, a District 11 candidate who campaigned side-by-side with Chen in the last month before the election. Jones, who finished in third place, had 2,813 of his votes transferred to Chen, while only 1,551 — about a half of what Chen got — went to Lai, according to the latest results from today.
If Chen, the more progressive candidate in District 11, wins the race, she will be joining a board that looks reliably more moderate than it was before this election — working with only four other progressive incumbents or projected winners, including Connie Chan in District 1, Myrna Melgar in District 7, Jackie Fielder in District 9, and Shamman Walton in District 10.
Although it’s unclear how many more ballots remain uncounted in District 11, Elections Director Arntz said Monday that there were about 1,200 provisional votes that are yet to be counted in District 11, the last district yet to declare a winner.
In the Board of Education race, incumbent Board President Matt Alexander grew his lead on John Jersin to 358 votes, a gain of 22 votes from yesterday. Alexander now has 118,643 votes, while Jersin is at 118,285 votes.
Alexander originally found himself 5,000 votes down after the earliest batch of results dropped on Election Day, but has been gaining on Jersin in nearly every subsequent count. Alexander finally caught and passed Jersin for the fourth and final spot on Monday.
Top vote-getters Jaime Huling, Parag Gupta and Supriya Ray remain in their spots and are poised to take office in January.
The next election update is slated for Thursday at 4 p.m.
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