Tony Nuñez appeared poised to avoid a November runoff in the race for Santa Cruz County’s 4th District supervisor seat after the latest election results pushed him just above the threshold needed for an outright victory.
In the final batch of election results released Thursday, Nuñez held 50.09% of the vote, narrowly exceeding the simple majority required to win the June primary outright. Incumbent Supervisor Felipe Hernandez had 30.81%.
With the race separated by a fraction of a percentage point above the 50% mark, Santa Cruz County elections officials will conduct an expanded manual tally of ballots before certifying the results.
County Clerk Tricia Webber said the action is part of the official canvass process and should not be confused with a recount.
“We are not doing a recount,” she said in an email. “We are escalating the manual tally beyond the required 1%. This is not unusual, and is often done when contests are close. We want to make sure when we certify that the results are 100% accurate.”
Webber said no candidate requested the expanded tally and that the decision was made by her office.
Under California law, counties may manually tally 1% of ballots cast as part of post-election auditing procedures. Elections officials have discretion to expand that review and manually count additional ballots when deemed necessary.
For the 4th District supervisor contest, the county will manually tally all ballots cast in the race and compare those results to the machine-tabulated totals.
The expanded tally is scheduled to begin Monday at 10am and continue during normal business hours until completed. Webber said she expects the process to take one to two days.
Candidates and their representatives have been invited to observe the tally. Observers will be allowed to sit near tally teams, view ballots as they are counted and review the final manual totals against the tabulated results.
Webber said the process is intended to provide confidence in the results before the county certifies the election next week.
