Barring a ballot miracle, Fred Tovar has sewn up a spot on the
school board.
Barring a ballot miracle, Fred Tovar has sewn up a spot on the school board.
With less than 27,000 ballots left to tally countywide, who will fill the two remaining seats is still unclear, but the trend points to incumbent Rhoda Bress and former trustee, Mark Good.
Tovar, with 9,095 votes, leads the race for the three open seats on the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees with nearly 1,000 votes more than Bress, who has held her second place position over the last several registrar updates. As of Wednesday afternoon, Bress held a 107-vote lead over Good. She trailed Good by as few as six votes just days after the election. Incumbent Jaime Rosso trails Good by 40 votes.
Bress garnered 8,139 votes, Good has 8,032 and Rosso has 7,992.
Although the number of votes separating Good and Rosso is slim, Rosso said he does not plan to request a recount. He said he will remain hopeful until the last ballot is tallied and that he’s not counting, or discounting, “his chickens until they’re hatched.”
About 27,000 ballots, mainly consisting of provisional ballots which require more extensive verification, are left to be counted.
More than 8,000 votes were added to the tally Wednesday afternoon, according to the registrar’s Web site. Spokeswoman Elma Rosas said she wasn’t certain when the tally would be finished. The county registrar’s office has 28 days to count and certify the ballots and election officials are working around the clock to count the remaining ballots, she said.
“I don’t want to guarantee anything earlier than that,” Rosas said. “We don’t know what we’re going to run into. We try to do it as quickly as we can but our priority is to make sure the election is accurate and that every vote counts.”
Of the 8,000 countywide ballots added Wednesday afternoon, about 100 were from Gilroy, assuming that each voter chose three school board candidates.
Using similar calculations, of the 27,000 countywide ballots left to tally, more than 300 could be from Gilroy and these votes could change the election results – not for Tovar, but for the other three candidates.
The incoming trustees will be sworn in at a Dec. 11 board meeting.
Another update will be posted on the registrar’s Web site Friday but it is unclear when the final numbers will come through, Rosas said.
