Congressional District 16 candidates Low and Simitian gain votes in Santa Clara County recount
The tie for second place in the Congressional District 16 race isn't officially broken yet, but on Tuesday Santa Clara County announced both candidates gained additional votes during the recount.
The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters on Tuesday said it completed its recount. The result was candidate Evan Low gaining 11 votes, for a total of 25,093, and candidate Joe Simitian gained seven votes, totaling 23,775.
Some votes were found to not have been counted due to human error. According to the registrar of voters, if such errors happen, in most cases it does not affect race results.
The recount in the race was requested earlier in April.
"More than 182,000 ballots were cast across both counties. However, the unprecedented nature of the Congressional District 16 results, which are extremely close, is a rare instance where even a tiny percentage of votes (less than 0.01% of the total) may have an impact on the outcome," the registrar of voters said.
San Mateo County's Registrar of Voters has yet to announce its recount results, so it's not yet known if the additional votes in Santa Clara will break the tie.
If it does, the recount results will be the official certified results for the race, and only one of the candidates will be moving on to the November election, where they will face off against former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.