After an eventful election night, HumCo’s Office of Elections looks toward November

“Super Tuesday” took the nation by storm, leading to victories, losses, and upsets.

While the national stage preps for a rematch between Trump and Biden, locally, the races have only just begun.

The votes are now undergoing the certification process.

“California is known for being a state that certifies the results later. There are a couple of pieces to that. First is the shift of voting patterns. More and more we are finding vote-by-mail ballots are being dropped off on election day,” Humboldt County Office of Elections county clerk/recorder Juan Pablo Cervantes said. “The other piece is in California we have a one-percent manual tally. We take a random one percent of all of the ballots and we’ll hand count them with a team of four.”

The Office of Elections has until April 4th to certify the votes and results.

This means that results can change within that 30-day window, which could impact key races.

“Some of our local contests, even one of our district contests, they’re really close. There kind of neck and neck. Fewer than 2,000 votes can make a difference in some of our statewide races,” Cervantes said. “In some of the local ones, we have some that are maybe 300 to 400 votes away from shifting who the winner might be or whether or not some will go to a runoff.”

Voters getting their voice heard have power in that shift, but that all depends on voter turnout.

“It was lower than it was than it was in the 2020 primary. I think it’s shaping up to be on par to the 2022 primary. So it’s a pretty low voter turnout. We are seeing it across the state though, so it’s not just a Humboldt County thing.”

The primary was a dress rehearsal for the general election in November.

“Things went pretty smooth. There’s always places where you wanna make things a little better, a little more efficient. This was definitely an opportunity to do that, take notes. Get the community to get used to the fact that they could go to any vote center and vote, regardless of where they live,” Cervantes said.