Officials still counting votes more than a week after election

More than a week after the election, some races in Ventura County still haven't been called due to the hundreds of thousands of still-to-be-counted ballots.

As of Wednesday, there were 410,000 (160,000 absentee and 250,000 provisional) uncounted ballots in Los Angeles County and nearly 70,000 (54,939 absentee and 14,345 provisional) ballots in Ventura County, according to the Secretary of State's unprocessed ballot report.

State elections officials wouldn't say how long it would be before all votes were counted.

On Election Day, voters who weren't verified and still wanted to vote were given provisional ballots. The ballots cannot officially be certified until 35 days after the election.

Locally, there are two races that remain up in the air.

In the 19th District race for state Senate, Democrat HannahBeth Jackson led Republican Tony Strickland by 1,203 votes as of Wednesday. Jackson has about 50.2 percent of the vote and Strickland 49.8 percent.

Measure U, an initiative that would create a K12 school district in Camarillo, is failing as of now, but the race is separated by only 1,237 votes.

Measure U would create a Camarillo Unified School District by merging Camarillo and Somis high school students from the Oxnard Union High School District with elementary and middle school students from the Pleasant Valley School District.

The vote currently is 49.15 percent in favor of Measure U (35,559 votes) and 50.85 percent against (36,796 votes).

And even though Audra Strickland, the Republican from Moorpark, claimed victory in the 37th District Assembly race immediately after the election, Democrat challenger Ferial Masry remained hopeful of a come-from-behind win because of a mere 3 percent difference in the count.

Eyes were also on Measure R, the Oak Park Unified School District school bond. The $29.4million bond needed a 55 percent approval for passage. But the bond passed with nearly 57 percent, and the extra ballots weren't a factor.

The surge in ballots was fueled by large voter turnout.

In Los Angeles County, 2.85 million out of 4.3 million registered voters, or 66.4 percent, went to the polls. In Ventura County, 242,820 out of 426,000 voters- - 57 percent- - went to the polls.

George Miranda, a spokesperson for the L.A. County elections office, said the increase was expected but what surprised him was the number of evenly split opinions.

"Some of them are really insanely close," Miranda said. "The races do seem to be very close this year. . . . We value accuracy over speed. We take our time counting, especially with the provisionals because we have to verify their signature, make sure they're registered and that they qualified to vote for the races they did. It's a little time consuming."

"Every county has outstanding ballots after every election, but they aren't required to report them, so we have some (numbers) and not others," said Allie Schembra with the Secretary of State's office. "Our office will never call an election. We simply count the ballots and say the results." The day after the 2004 election there were 400,000 unprocessed ballots in L.A. County and 94,400 in Ventura County. This year, the two counties had that many a full week later.