The Monterey County Elections Office processed 12,618 more ballots for the latest election results, published just after 4pm on Tuesday, June 14. While those results show some changes, they appear to lock in the early results in the race for Monterey County sheriff.
That primary had four candidates: Marina Police Chief Tina Nieto, Monterey County Sheriff's Capt. Joe Moses, Sheriff's Deputy Justin Patterson and Monterey Regional Airport/Del Rey Oaks Police Chief Jeff Hoyne. In a four-way race, a runoff is almost a given—to win outright at the primary level, a candidate must get more than 50 percent of the vote.
The latest numbers show Nieto in the lead with 29,607 votes, or 48.9 percent, shy of that threshold.
That sets up a Nov. 2 runoff election between Nieto and Moses, who has maintained the second-place position since early returns were announced; as of June 14, he has 15,575 votes, or 26.7 percent.
(Patterson, with 18 percent, and Hoyne, with 7.4 percent, are out of the running.)
“I really would like to just win it outright, and start to work on the transition,” Nieto said earlier in the day before the latest count was released on Tuesday. “If we have to go to November, I believe I will still win.”
There are an unknown number of ballots left to process, but the number is likely too small to influence the outcome of this race. The Elections Office reports just 13 provisional ballots remain to count. In addition, there are an unknown number of vote-by-mail ballots that may have inadvertently made their way to another county, and Monterey County's elections team is continuing to collect any misplaced ballots that were postmarked by Election Day (June 7) and received by June 14, even if they went to the wrong place.
In addition, elections officials are contacting voters who returned ballots that were unsigned or with questionable signatures that did not match what is on file. Those 282 voters have until July 5 to correct their signature discrepancies; the deadline to certify the election results is July 7.
While those uncounted ballots could change the results in some other very close races, they are unlikely to change the outcome in the sheriff's race.
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