San Francisco Dept. of Elections still processing over 100,000 votes
San Francisco election workers were busy processing votes Wednesday that will determine who will be the next mayor of the city.
By Wednesday evening, the San Francisco Department of Elections had processed over 200,000 ballots.
Preliminary results show Daniel Lurie emerging as the frontrunner and Mayor London Breed trailing in second.
However, John Arntz, the San Francisco Director of Elections, cautions these are preliminary results and there are still 157,000 ballots to count, which will likely take the department weeks to go through.
"These are not final results. The Department is not indicating or implying these are final results. So, any numbers that people are seeing on these preliminary results reports will change," he said. "These are just snapshots in time. These snapshots are going to change through time."
Arntz said he nor the department will declare a winner until he certifies the results around Dec. 3. As for the reason why there isn't a final result yet, he said it's a matter of volume.
"It's not a ranked-choice voting issue, it's a matter of volume – the number of ballots that we have to process. Each ballot requires individual attention," he said. "When I certify the election around December 3rd, we'll issue a ranked choice report. That's the final result. That's when ranked-choice matters."
With the preliminary snapshot that first became evident on election night, Lurie and his campaign were energetic and optimistic.
"Elections in San Francisco take some days to resolve. But we do not need to know the final results to know what this city means to us," he said. "We launched this campaign 13 months ago because we believe strongly, it is time for accountable leadership in city hall."
Despite the initial preliminary results showing her trailing Lurie, Breed maintained confidence and hope on election night.
"In 2018, there were just a few days of votes that were being counted, the vote count was going all kinds of different ways. And again, I won by 2,500 votes. So, I want to be very clear — This is not over until the last vote is counted," she said.
James Taylor, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, said while it currently does look promising for Lurie, this is not a done deal.
"It usually takes a couple of rounds and some time for us to know exactly the result," he said. "The counting hasn't stopped. If you have 150,000 votes, it could bring his back down and hers up."
However, he said Lurie holds the upper hand.
"I would rather be in Lurie's camp right now than in London Breed's," he said. "If I was in London Breed's counsel, I would tell her to brace herself. If I was in Lurie's counsel, I would say you've done a good job, let's hope this holds."
The next round of preliminary results will be released on Thursday, Nov. 7 around 4:00 p.m., when the Department begins issuing daily preliminary result reports.