By Adam Pagnucco.
The Board of Education (BOE) At-Large race, pitting Brenda Diaz against Omar Lazo, is the only undecided race in MoCo at this writing. As of the morning after the election, here are the candidates’ votes by voting mode.
These are the current margins by mode.
Early Voting: Lazo +4,235 votes (+5.3%)
Election Day: Lazo +1,689 votes (+1.2%)
Mail: Diaz +1,444 votes (+3.3%)
Total: Lazo +4,480 votes (+1.7%)
The vast majority of the votes still to be counted are mail ballots, in which Diaz is currently leading. That plus the tightness of the margin could give Diaz a chance to catch up and win, as did Council At-Large candidate Karla Silvestre in the Democratic primary.
Will she do it?
Evaluating Diaz’s chances requires a number of assumptions.
The most important single variable is how many mail ballots remain to be cast in this race. At this writing, 43,682 mail votes have been cast in the BOE At-Large race. However, 141,847 mail ballots were sent to MoCo voters. That means more than 98,000 more mail ballots could be cast in this race.
But many of them won’t be cast for two reasons. First, some mail ballots that were sent to voters won’t be returned to the Board of Elections, at least not in timely fashion. And second, some voters don’t vote in school board races.
Consider these percentages from the 2022 and 2026 general elections.
Of the 142,136 mail ballots sent to MoCo voters in the 2022 general election, 118,454 votes (83.3%) were actually cast.
In the 2022 general election, MoCo voters cast a total of 347,129 votes. They cast 343,371 votes for governor, or 98.9% of their total.
So far in this year’s general election, MoCo voters have cast 265,719 votes in the BOE At-Large race and 317,791 votes for governor. So BOE At-Large votes are so far 83.6% of votes for governor.
Applying those percentages to remaining mail ballots helps us project the number of mail ballots remaining in the BOE At-Large election. At this moment, that results in a total of 97,773 mail votes in this race. Since 43,682 mail votes have already been counted, the implication is that 54,091 remain.
But that’s rough math, folks!
The other important variable is how many provisional votes remain. In the 2022 general election, provisional votes in MoCo accounted for 6.4% of early and election day votes. With today’s totals, that implies that there will be 14,206 provisional votes in the BOE At-Large race.
Again, that’s rough math. And it’s heavily dependent on assumptions. It’s best to run a few different scenarios and see how they play out.
Scenario 1: The above assumptions hold, the new mail-in ballots will have the same percentages as the existing ones and provisional votes will be distributed like early and election day votes.
Diaz closes the gap but not by enough. Lazo wins by 3,071 votes or 0.9%.
Scenario 2: Like Scenario 1 except that Diaz outperforms new mail-in ballots by 2 points relative to those already cast.
Diaz closes the gap some more but again, it’s not enough. Lazo wins by 907 votes or 0.3%.
Scenario 3: Like Scenario 1 except that Diaz outperforms new mail-in ballots by 3 points relative to those already cast.
Diaz wins by 175 votes or 0.1%.
One wild card. Of the 141,847 mail-in ballots requested by MoCo voters, 100,083 (71%) were requested by Democrats. How many of them know that the Republican Party supported Diaz and the Democratic Party supported Lazo?
In any event, you can see how tight this race is and how any projections are extremely sensitive to assumptions about remaining ballots and performance. Lazo has the advantage. Diaz still has a chance. And regardless of the outcome, it’s a steep climb uphill to go against the Democratic Party and the Apple Ballot in a MoCo general election.