Jacob Naven held an 876-vote lead over incumbent Manteca Mayor Gary Singh as of Wednesday’s 1:11 a.m. update, with Naven pulling in 8,560 votes to Singh’s 7,684 — a 52.7 percent to 47.3 percent split. But the race is far from settled: San Joaquin County still has just over 90,000 ballots left to process, meaning the outcome could shift considerably before it’s final.
The count so far reflects only part of the picture. As the Manteca Bulletin reported, the Tuesday-night and early-morning tallies typically include ballots cast in person on Election Day along with mail-in ballots that were received and verified before the final weekend of October. Election officials updated the count twice overnight, most recently at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday, folding in in-person votes from Election Day on top of the mail ballots processed by Oct. 31.
What’s still outstanding is substantial. Of the roughly 90,000 ballots left to process countywide, 83,239 are vote-by-mail ballots received by Election Day, with an additional 3,656 provisional and conditional ballots, as well as nearly 2,000 damaged or further-review ballots, according to Stocktonia. That backlog is nearly 5,000 ballots higher than it was during the last general election two years ago, the outlet noted.
Why So Many Ballots Still Need Work
Not every uncounted ballot is simply waiting in line — some need to be fixed before they can be counted at all. Mail-in ballot signatures must be verified against the signatures registered voters have on file, unlike in-person ballots, which are checked at the polling place before a voter ever casts a vote. San Joaquin County has 3,070 ballots that still need curing, a category that includes envelopes with an unsigned signature line, ones with a signature that doesn’t clearly match what’s on file, and ballots from first-time federal voters who still need to provide identification…