The pace of the ballot counting is testing the patience of candidates and their supporters in several tight races, including the mayoral contests in Santa Clara and San Jose and the elections for District 1 supervisor and county sheriff.

Polls showed the big-bucks battle between progressive Chavez and moderate Mahan was likely going to be close.

San Jose, a million-person city in which a fifth of its residents choose the mayor, has a history of close elections. Only three of the past seven open elections could be called lopsided victories. The last time an open seat was decided in one round was 40 years ago, in 1982—the year 39-year-old Matt Mahan was born.

As of Nov. 9 with 51% of the ballots counted in the Board of Supervisors’ only contested seat, Arenas held a 3,488-vote lead over Khamis.

With 100% of 103 precincts reporting partial results, with 49% of the votes remaining to be counted, Jonsen, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s captain, held a 7,761-vote margin over the retired sheriff’s officer.

Here are the preliminary results for the California Legislature seats in Santa Clara County – six in the Assembly and one in the Senate

There were no surprises in the Assembly races, since Democrats outnumber all other parties and independents combined in the county. But in the 10th District Senate race, two Democrats, Lily Mei and Aisha Wahab, were in a dead heat with 100% of precincts reporting. Counting of mail-in ballots will decide the Senate seat.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters said Eisenberg had nearly 54 percent of early returns, with Kremen just over 46 percent.

Vote Centers close at 8pm tonight, but it can take a few hours for all vote centers to report results, and weeks before the final totals are known.

The Department of Motor Vehicles is required by law to screen motor-voter registrations, and county elections officials say they rely on this information to send out ballots.

Newsom’s absence was “strange,” say political observers, given the tradition that the governor will see the president when he visits.

With few exceptions, the grand jury report’s observations, conclusions and recommendations landed squarely on one side of the city’s political divide–led by Mayor Lisa Gillmor–that was on the losing end of the 2020 council elections, promping the 49ers to call for an investigation of the grand jury for conflicts of interest.

The first poll results in the San Jose mayor general election campaign, of 674 likely city voters polled in the last week of July, showed Chavez leading slightly with 38% of the initial vote preference and Mahan with 37%, with one-fourth of the polled voters undecided.

As the 2022 election season enters its final quarter, the San Francisco 49ers – whose money boosted prior campaigns in both San Jose this spring and Santa Clara in 2020 – may be staying on the sidelines.

With time running out, state lawmakers likely will have to choose between alienating a powerful union and streamlining affordable housing development, as construction trades are at an impasse regarding their support for key housing legislation. 

Any recourse to possible inaccuracies or omissions on Gilmor’s Form 700s is up to the Fair Political Practices Commission – and Santa Clara voters – and not via lawsuits, because of a legal battle she won in 2021.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last month aired campaign ads in the Sunshine State accusing Republican leaders of restricting abortion access, voting rights and free speech.