One of the few moments of comedic relief for us on an otherwise completely depressing night for us last Tuesday included Republican Los Angeles County District Atttorney Steve Cooley's grandiose victory speech on election night. Not quite Paladino level but Cooley went up on stage and declared victory, called on his Democratic opponent (San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris) to concede, claimed he would be the best Attorney General in California history (take that Earl Warren, Pat Brown, and Stanley Mosk!), and went so far as to schedule a victory press conference for the next morning. This turned out to be hilarious because Wednesday morning, we woke up to find out that Kamala Harris had a 15,000 vote lead statewide with 100% of precincts reporting. The election is not over though, there are well over a million ballots to count statewide and Cooley has pulled back into the lead over the weekend. So I write this diary to briefly update everyone on the state of the race.
The current numbers from the Secretary of State's website are as follows:
Steve Cooley: 3,763,416 votes 46.1%
Kamala Harris: 3,722,458 votes 45.6%
The current margin separating them is 40,958 votes. I will caveat though that the California Secretary of State's website has generally been behind individual county reports (though it appears to be mostly caught up). Why has Cooley moved back into the lead? Mainly because the large counties in southern California that went overwhelmingly for him have been counting their ballots far more quickly than the rest of the state and have been far more quick to report their numbers.
Also, some of you may wonder how Cooley has reclaimed the lead when California reports itself as having 100% of precincts reporting. On election day, the first ballots to be counted are absentees (known as "Vote by Mail Ballots"), often ones that are permanent. Then the counties count up their precinct results (some counties like Alpine and Sierra are now all mail in ballot couties). But there are numerous other ballots that California election officials wait to count until after election day. There are three main types of post-election day ballots left to count:
- Late arriving Vote by Mail ballots (this includes Vote by Mail ballots that are dropped off at polling precincts on election day by late deciding voters).
- Provisional Ballots
- Other Ballots (those that are either damaged or impossible to read.)
Out of 58 Counties in California, the following ten have completed all their post-election day ballots:
Alpine County
Colusa County
Glenn County
Kings County
Lassen County
Modoc County
Mono County
Plumas County
Sierra County
Trinity County
Out of these ten, all but one (Alpine County) voted for Steve Cooley.
The following counties have completed counting all of their Vote By Mail Ballots:
Inyo County
Mariposa County
Merced County
Riverside County
San Bernardino County
Siskiyou County
Sutter County
Tuolumne County
Of these counties, Riverside and San Bernardino are most important to note. They went heavily for Cooley and had huge numbers of Vote By Mail ballots to count. Both have been reflected in the updated state totals.
The following counties report that they have no more "other ballots" left to count:
Alameda County
Amador County
Contra Costa County
Del Norte County
Inyo County
Lake County
Madera County
Mendocino County
Merced County
Orange County
Placer County
Sacramento County
San Benito County
Santa Barbara County
Santa Clara County
Sonoma County
Tuolumne County
Aside from the ten counties that have finished counting, none have finished counting their provisional ballots.
Cooley's biggest gain today came from San Diego County where he net gained 19,001 votes. However, the number of outstanding ballots to process dropped from 220,000 to 80,000. Cooley's strongest county in the state is Orange County. Their fast counting of returns has helped Cooley moved back into the lead but they have almost completed counting their Vote By Mail ballots. The most recent update from the Orange County updates are as follows:
They have split their vote by mail ballots into two categories, those that were mailed and those that were returned to the precinct on election day. Of the first category, they have counted all but 1,175 Vote by Mail ballots. Of the second category, they have counted all but 15,948 ballots.
Tommorow, we are likely to get a crucial update from Los Angeles County and will have a far clearer picture of what's going on. And hopefully, the update will bring good news for Harris.