As of last night, Philippa Klessig had 39 more votes than Chris Mann (subject to the vote being certified, and the balance of votes being counted). During every election, there are votes that need to be counted after election night. These fall primarily into two categories: vote by mail (aka absentee) ballots that were turned in on election day, and provisional votes. In both cases, these need to first be confirmed that they are legitimate votes, and then they need to be counted.
A provisional vote is one that the person got to the polling center, and they were not on the list of people registered to vote. Sometimes, this maybe an error in the registration process, but often it’s because the voter showed up at the wrong polling place. Either way, they are allowed to vote with a provisional ballot, subject to confirmation after election day.
Normally, the number of both of these types of votes is small enough that they can be verified and counted the next day. This year, Westlake Village has a very large (comparatively) number of these votes. In part, this is because of the much higher vote by mail numbers, and in part because of the higher number of provisional votes.
As of this writing, there are 80 Vote by Mail ballots, and 65 Provisional Ballots left to be counted. This is not a large enough number to change the result of Ned Davis winning re-election. But, mathematically, it is enough that the result could change between Philippa Klessig and Chris Mann. That said, in all likelihood, Klessig will continue to lead Mann and win the election.
The combination of the large number of votes to be counted, combined with Friday being a holiday and a number of ballots needing to be sent to Norwalk (where the County offices are) for confirmation, the ballot counting will not be finished until Monday, November 14.
