Oakland – Loren Taylor and Barbara Lee are locked in a tight race to be the next mayor of Oakland, a special choice that has politically divided the city, even in clear geographical lines, and that may not decide during week.
Taylor, a former member of the City Council, Hero, a election leader of 51% to 48% on Elections on Lee, former East Bay congressman, on a margin of 1,100 votes.
Electoral officials of Alameda County annulled 49,000 votes on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday they estimated that around 42,000 additional tickets must still be counted. An unknown number or tickets by mail for election day has not yet arrived.
In another part of the Electoral Ballot, the Policy Analyst Charlene Wang maintained 50% of the first place votes in a race to fill a vacancy of the City Council of Oakland, while voters favored in 64% a sales tax aimed at alleviating the budget crisis of the city.
The result is not final in the council race, which would fill District 2 of the city that represses Chinatown, Jack London Square and around Lake Merritt such as Eastlake and the neighborhood of San Antonio.
The mayor’s career, which had a total of 10 candidates, is completely available.
How the new mayor of Oakland will ultimately will be chosen
The next set of results is expected to be published on Friday, and more votes will be announced every Friday after that. That may sound like a long wait, but the best official of the Alameda County elections said less results in real help from their team to count faster.
Stop the count, that is, stop voting votes to publish online results more frequently would interrupt an extensive counting process, said Tim Dupuis, the County voter registrar, in an interview.
“Imagine put 42,000 envelopes in front of you and count to open each or them and take out what is inside,” Dupuis said on Wednesday, trying to demonstrate the work scale ahead for your office.
I could spend at least a couple of weeks before the race is decided. Dupuis has 30 full days after April 15 to certify the elections, but said that Oakland city officials can request that it occur before if the results are no longer in doubt.
Leave vu?
The first returns on Tuesday night gave Taylor a more breathed space, but Lee’s voters had reduced the gap at the end of the night.
For many voters, the trajectory could feel as “Deja Vu”, such as Noah Finneburgh, former campaign consultant from former SHENG Thao scope, put it on the night of the elections. Thao beat Taylor an early deficit in the 2022 race, he will emerge later, he returns to win.
It is more difficult to predict any clear trend, however, of the results available this time. The second lot of about 4,200 votes, which favored Lee, exclusively represented tickets cast in person in the voting places on election day.
The first lot, which gave Taylor’s advantage, was completely sent by mail. The tickets cast in the voting places are now completely attentive, which means that each new set of results in the future will be sent by mail votes or those that will be launched to the polls.
In other words, there is no definitive understanding or if the tickets sent later will be put on the side of Lee or Taylor.
Where Lee and Taylor are getting their votes
It is still early, but an important topic of the elections is the clear division where the voters of respect for Lee and Taylor live.
In the first 49,000 votes, reads in the enclosures throughout the west of Oakland, the city center and the great strip of the city east of Lake Merritt, to the fluids near the Leandro border.
Taylor’s support is much more concentrated in Oakland’s hills, where the typically richer and more politically moderate communities see a much higher voter participation than in low -income neighborhoods. He also leads in a couple of enclosures from district 2 to the south of the lake.
The image of the race is incomplete with so many more ballots to count. And the county’s electoral officials have no answer to a key question of who the removal votes were issued.
Will the votes of classified choice shape the result?
Shortly after this news organization reports last week about the lack of clear classification options in the mayor’s career, Lee announced a list of itself and its fellow candidates Suz Robinson, Renia Webb, Elizabeth Swaney and President Cristina Gropo.
None of the other candidates in the 10 candidate race secured 2% of the first place votes in the first returns. But with the margin between Taylor and reads so thin, the transfers of votes of the others that run could still make a difference.
Lee is surpassing Taylor in webb and Tyron Jordan votes, the respective fourth and second place candidates. Taylor is getting more votes that reads the third place Mindy Pechenuk.
Those could pay dividends, but it is still too early to say how much.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter that covers Oakland. Call it or send a text message to 510-905-5495 or send an email to shomik@bayareenewsgroup.com.
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