Page One
Election 2014: Worthington, Beier, Hemphill still ahead after second day of counting absentee ballots.
In the District 7 City Council race, incumbent Kriss Worthington increased his lead over challenger Sean Barry. While the initial vote-by-mail ballots counted on election night favored Barry, he is so far not winning the ballots dropped at the polls on election day.
In District 8, the race tightened a bit. While George Beier is running third with first choice ballots, he leads Lori Droste by just 19 votes in the ranked choice vote by 1692-1673; at the end of yesterday's count, he had a 28 vote lead. Lori Droste still leads with first choice votes and widened her lead in today's count. Neither McCormick or Alvarez Cohen have any real chance of winning.
In the School Board race for third place, Karen Hemphill pulled further ahead of Julie Sinai, and now has a 300 vote lead, up from a 244 lead yesterday.
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters announced last night that counting would continue during the weekend.
As of 4:50 today (numbers in parentheses are votes as of 4:52 yesterday.)
District 7
Kriss Worthington 559 (475) + 84Sean Barry 445 (375) + 70
Kriss' margin before latest update: +100; after the update: 114. He has 55.7% of the votes counted so far. There is virtually no chance that Barry will get enough votes from the remaining absentees and provisionals to overcome Kriss' lead.
District 8
Lori Droste 1044 (883) + 161Mike Alvarez Cohen 1004 (866) +138
George Beier 958 (817) +141
Jacqueline McCormick 680 (579) + 101
BUSD School Directors
Ty Alper 15481 (12,668)Josh Daniels 14749 (12207)
Karen Hemphill 12729 (10511)
Julie Sinai 12429 (10267)
Norma Harrison 2910 (2565)
At the beginning of election night, Julie Sinai was ahead of Karen Hemphill on the strength of the initial vote-by-mail count, but Hemphill took the lead when votes cast at the polls were counted.
Countywide, 25670 vote-by-mail ballots, about a quarter of the outstanding ballots were counted on Monday; today an additional 35,489 were counted. After the Registrar's Office finishes with the vote-by-mail ballots, they will then process the provisional ballots which number about 24,000 countywide.
The Registrar's office does not post information about which precincts the absentee votes counted after election day came from.
Updates will be posted on the Planet Web site as results are released.
