The daily ballot count indicates there are still 643 “spoiled” ballots yet to be tallied. According to the daily ballot count, 83.43% or 29,128 ballots were returned but some of them had problems, like missing signatures and the voter has ten days to verify their ballots. The elections office has until November 26 to certify the results but is trying to complete the process before the Thanksgiving holiday. It will be November 20 or thereabouts before we know whether Bob Main retains his lead over Fred Messerle.
As of November 7, only 19 votes separate the two out of 25,048 ballots cast. Interestingly, approximately 1,250 fewer voters bothered to vote in the two other commissioner battles which may indicate they simply didn’t like their choices. Position two had a higher than average number of write-ins. Considering this discrepancy, the higher vote count for position one may have been more a vote against one candidate or the other rather than a show of support. Nevertheless, the agony of not knowing will drag on for another ten days or so and possibly longer than that if neither candidate gains enough votes to not trigger an automatic recount.
