The San Diego County Registrar of Voters still has 26,000 votes to count before winners can be declared in tight primary races -- like the state senate race between Juan Vargas and Mary Salas. Mail-in ballots represent most of the votes that still must be counted.
Many mail-in ballots arrived and were counted prior to Election Day last week. That allowed the county registrar to announce the results of 40 percent of the vote right after the polls closed. But mail-in votes that arrived at the last minute created a backlog that Registrar of Voters' Deborah Seiler says still must be counted.
"They arrived by mail Tuesday morning, Election Day," she said. "They were dropped off at the polls during Election Day. Those are the ones, primarily, that we're counting. That accounted for more than 100,000 ballots."
Another 17,000 provisional ballots have added to the vote-count backlog. Elections, that remain too close to call, also include a city council seat in Oceanside where the top two candidates are separated by 85 votes. Seiler says about 37 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the primary.
