Staff at the Del Norte County Elections Office speak with local media on Super Tuesday. Photo: Jessica Cejnar

Valerie Starkey maintains a lead over Jim Ramsey in the March 3 election for Del Norte County District 2 supervisor, but just barely.

With a margin of eight votes between them and more ballots for the elections office to process, it’s still uncertain which challenger will face incumbent Lori Cowan in November’s run-off.

“These are definitely not official results,” Del Norte County Clerk-Recorder Alissia Northrup told the Wild Rivers Outpost after releasing the most recent election results on Friday. “People need to remember that it’s not all District 2, which narrows it down even more. It’s uncomfortably close.”

Three days after the election, Cowan continues to lead both Starkey and Ramsey with 40.59 percent of the vote, according to the elections office. Starkey comes in second with 30.04 percent of the vote and Ramsey, third, with 29.37 percent, according to the elections office.

On Wednesday, Northrup told the Wild Rivers Outpost that she had 794 more ballots to process for the March 3 primary. Between then and Friday, her office received a handful of vote-by-mail ballots and expected to receive more from the post office Friday afternoon.

Northrup said her staff was also still processing conditional voter registration and provisional ballots Friday. Then, there is the follow-up with those who either didn’t sign their ballots or have a signature that doesn’t match the one on their voter registration card, she said.

“We’re working on provisionals and conditionals today and vote by mails, the few we get in the mail,” Northrup told the Outpost. “We’re hoping next week to run them again. We can’t call it official. Then it’s going to be looking at one or two (who) come in for a signature.”

According to the elections office, a race with three or more candidates is likely to go to a run-off election unless the winner receives 50 percent or more of the votes.

On Wednesday when only 12 votes separated her from Ramsey, Starkey said it was too soon to make a statement on the outcome of the election. On Friday, she said she felt much the same as she did on Wednesday.

“I appreciate all the hard work that Alissia and her staff are doing to get this out as quickly as possible,” Starkey said Friday. “I know it’ll work out.”

According to the latest election results, for the District 1 supervisor race, Darrin Short received 61.15 percent of the vote to John Pritchett’s 38.85 percent.

In the District 5 supervisor race, incumbent Bob Berkowitz led with 57.14 percent of the vote to Kevin Hendrick’s 42.86 percent.
Meanwhile the numbers changed slightly in the California District 2 Assembly race. In Del Norte County, local special education teacher Charlotte Svolos led the vote with 54.30 percent to incumbent Jim Wood’s 45.70 percent.

Districtwide, however, Wood received 66.5 percent of the vote to Svolos’ 33.5 percent, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.

As for president, Donald Trump led the Republican vote by 95.83 percent of the vote in Del Norte County.

In the Democratic presidential race in Del Norte, Bernie Sanders came in first with 37.36 percent of the vote. Joe Biden came in second with 24.83 percent of the vote and Elizabeth Warren came in third with 11.87 percent of the vote, according to the latest election results.

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