Marin posts unofficial final election results
Marin County posted its unofficial final results on Wednesday for the Nov. 8 election, adding just 355 new ballots to the count.
The county has tallied 121,398 ballots. With 170,534 Marin residents registered to vote in the election, the turnout was 71%.
That’s a middling showing compared to some other recent elections. In the 2018 general election — also a midterm election with no presidential campaign — Marin had a turnout of more than 82%. In the 2014 midterm, Marin’s turnout was 60%.
Even so, there could still be a few votes added to the final tally. As required by law, the registrar has given a few voters whose signature on the ballot didn’t seem to match theirs a chance to verify the ballots.
“If they didn’t sign their envelope or their signature doesn’t compare with what we have in their voter record, we send them a letter,” said Marin County Registrar of Voters Lynda Roberts. “They have an opportunity to fix the problem. We’re getting letters back daily.”
Roberts said letters were sent to 426 people, 337 to people who submitted signatures that didn’t match the one on file and 89 to those who failed to sign the envelope containing their ballots.
By law, the county has until Dec. 15 to certify the election, but Roberts said she hopes to certify Marin’s results by early next week. She said her department will continue to add ballots whose signatures are verified up to two days before the final certification.
More than 61% of the ballots arrived by mail on or after Election Day. Under California election law, the registrar was required to count ballots that arrived at her office by Nov. 15 if they were postmarked on or before Election Day.
Roberts said 400 ballots could not be counted because they were postmarked after Election Day and another 28 were disqualified because they arrived after Nov. 15.
Despite the large number of ballots that remained uncounted the day after the election, the addition of the remaining ballots failed to alter the outcome of any of the races or ballot measures.
In the most closely watched contest, the race between Marin County Supervisor Damon Connolly and California Coastal Commission member Sara Aminzadeh for the District 12 Assembly seat, Aminzadeh trailed Connolly by more than 9 percentage points the day following the election.
But as ballots that arrived on Election Day or after were counted, Aminzadeh continued to eat away at Connolly’s lead. That trend continued on Wednesday with Aminzadeh getting 26 votes closer to Connolly. However, she still trails Connolly by more than 6,000 votes, about 3.6 percentage points.
District 12 includes all of Marin County and about 45% of Sonoma County. Deva Marie Proto, Sonoma County’s registrar of voters, said her county still has about 2,000 ballots left to count. She expects to add the final ballots to her count on Friday.