Matt Alexander, the incumbent president of the Board of Education, appears poised to keep his job after eking out a victory over challenger John Jersin for the fourth and final open seat.
The San Francisco Department of Elections moments ago released the results of another 1,961 ballots, bringing the grand total of ballots to 411,708 — 78.83 percent of the electorate.
Very few ballots are left to be counted; only about 250 of them, including 200 vote-by-mail ballots and 50 provisional ones cast at polling places throughout the city and the City Hall voting center.
Even if the 250 remaining ballots all go Jersin’s way (a mathematical anomaly), it would not be enough for Jersin to flip the results. Alexander has a lead of 287 votes; he gained 37 votes from the last drop on Nov. 16. Alexander now has 122,588 votes while Jersin is at 122,301 votes.
“I feel the way I have been feeling: Hopeful,” Alexander said about the results. “I’m glad I will be able to stay on the board. I’m excited that I’m gonna be able to continue to work for the district.”
Alexander, for his part, said that he and Jersin supported each other in the race. “He’s great. I really admire his advocacy as a parent, and his skill set,” Alexander said, saying he and Jersin have been in conversation with each other for the last few days. “There are a lot of really qualified people running in the race and I think people have a lot of choices.”
Alexander said he will be waiting to talk to Jersin first before issuing any statement. Alexander will join the other three top vote-getters, Jaime Huling, Parag Gupta and Supriya Ray, to take office in January.
As for the tight District 11 supervisor race, Chyanne Chen claimed victory over the weekend with a slim lead of 190 votes over her opponent Michael Lai, who conceded Sunday afternoon. Chen kept up today with her lead of 11,984 votes to Lai’s 11,788 votes, a 196-vote difference, according to the latest results dropped moments ago.
The next election update is slated for Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 4 p.m.
I’d rather not see any of the incumbents who follow the Gabriela Lopez school of thinking. But we didn’t really need a LinkedIn guy either.
I am a proud SFUSD attendee back in the day, he can still lose with that math.