The California Secretary of State’s office reports almost a million ballots from Tuesday’s primary election still have to be counted.
About 780,000 are mail-in ballots that came in too late to be counted on Election Day. The results would determine the fate of Proposition 29, which would raise the cigarette tax a dollar a pack.
At first count, the Secretary of State’s Office showed the measure trailing by 63,000 votes, but now the gap has narrowed to just 45,000.
Chris Lehman is Campaign Manager for Vote Yes on 29. He said the campaign remains hopeful.
“We’re rooting for more votes to be counted in places where we did well and we’re hoping there are not a lot of votes in places we did poorly,” said Lehman.
Lehman also said more people voted in favor of Prop 29 in San Francisco County but the Central Valley rejected the cigarette tax by a margin of almost 2-to-1.
Money raised by the tax would go to cancer research and smoking prevention programs.
