By Adam Pagnucco.
With most (but not all) of the mail ballots counted, MoCo’s three school board races are closer to being finalized.
First, here is the state of counting. Early votes and election day votes are done. Provisional votes have not been counted. Mail vote counting is underway. This last factor has the potential – although an unlikely one – to affect the outcome.
Roughly 16,500 mail ballots were counted in each of the school board races as of election night. As of May 18, more than 38,000 mail ballots were counted in each of those races. As of May 19, the county had received 78,383 mail ballots and had accepted (counted) 50,142 of them.
What accounts for that difference between 38k+ mail ballots counted in the school board races and 50k total mail ballots counted? The answer is probably related to undervoting, which is the practice of casting a ballot without voting for every office on it. From 2000 through 2022, anywhere from a fifth to a third of MoCo voters voted for Congress but not school board in general elections. That pattern continues today. A bit of back-of-the-envelope math suggests that there may be 20,000 mail ballots – give or take – left to count for school board.
I have not seen a report on the number of provisional ballots cast yet although they are due to be counted starting on May 22. In MoCo’s 2022 primary, more than 8,000 provisional ballots were cast.
Let’s look at the state of play in the three school board primaries.
At-Large
This race has not been in doubt since election night. The general election will feature incumbent Lynne Harris and Apple Ballot candidate Rita Montoya, who are close to tied at the top. No one else is within striking distance.
District 2
Apple Ballot candidate Natalie Zimmerman, who grabbed nearly half of the vote, is headed to the general election. Her opponent will be insurgent Brenda Diaz, who is in second place right now, or incumbent Rebecca Smondrowski. The table below shows how Diaz and Smondrowski compared on election night and on May 18 (the most recent count available at this writing).
Diaz leads Smondrowski in both early and election day votes, while the latter leads in mail ballots. As more mail ballots have been counted, Smondrowski has picked up a net 989 votes. I am skeptical that enough mail ballots remain to be counted to enable Smondrowski to pass Diaz. I am not 100% ruling it out, but I would much rather be Diaz at this moment than the incumbent.
District 4
Apple Ballot candidate Laura Stewart, like Zimmerman, received almost half the votes in her race and will run in the general election. Her opponent will be incumbent Shebra Evans or challenger Bethany Mandel. Here is how Evans and Mandel compared on election night and on May 18.
Mandel trailed Evans in mail ballots on election night and continues to trail. As more mail ballots are being counted, Mandel is falling further behind. Unless there is something radically different about the uncounted mail ballots from the counted ones, Evans is going to survive.
The local boards of elections have a deadline to certify their primary election results on May 24 and the state has a deadline to certify them statewide on June 13. We will know the final results soon enough.