Fresno County still has tens of thousands of ballots to count in Gavin Newsom recall election
Fresno County and most of the central San Joaquin Valley voted for the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to unofficial vote numbers — but there are still tens of thousands of ballots to count.
Fresno started Election Night off with “no” votes on the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom leading the way but when election workers stopped for the night “yes” had squeaked ahead with 50.2% of the electorate.
The votes counted through Tuesday night were 181,392 of the 506,684 registered in the county. That is a 35% turnout so far with many more ballots yet to be counted.
In Fresno County, there are still more than 80,600 ballots to count plus any more that come in the mail and are postmarked on Tuesday, according to James Kus, the registrar of voters.
The votes must be certified by an Oct. 22 deadline, but Kus said he expects the process to be complete in the first week of October. The special election ballots only have two items so should not take as long as a routine election, he said.
He estimated around 18,000 people voted on Election Day compared to the next highest day of in-person voting of about 3,000, though it went smoothly.
“(Election Day) was pretty quiet,” he said. “I had no one calling me about overzealous observed and no complaints from observers.”
Even with the outstanding votes still left to count in Fresno County and the Valley, however, it would not be enough to change the outcome of the election, as the majority of the state overwhelmingly voted against the recall. Nearly 64% of voters opposed the recall, with 36% in support.
This year’s election drew more observers than past years. A significant amount of them came from the Election Integrity Project, an organization that says it is nonpartisan though they have been reported to come from the conservative tea party movement.
Other Valley counties
The gap between “yes” and “no” also closed in Merced County, where votes against the recall had a strong early showing. The latest tally still has “no” slightly in the lead at 50.05%, according to the registrar of voters office.
The tally so far includes 29% of the Merced electorate, or 36,575 of the 122,558 registered voters.
Tulare County and Kings County both voted for the recall with 58.63% and 62.8%, respectively.
Mariposa County voted 59.2% for the recall as well, as did Madera County with 58.9% voting “yes.”
Tulare has so far counted 74,129 ballots from the 205,753 registered, a 36.03% turnout.
There were 18,271 votes counted through Election Night in Madera, and 14,828 cast in Kings. Mariposa counted 4,572 votes.
This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 6:06 PM.
