Early results for the East Palo Alto City Council election have revealed a tight race as of Wednesday as nine candidates compete to win one of three open at-large spots.
As of 2 a.m., three candidates are leading ahead of the rest of the pack with only a few dozen votes separating them. Incumbent Carlos Romero had 16.8% with Webster Lincoln on his tail at 16.36%. Mark Dinan was in third with 15.75% of the vote so far.
The next closest contender, Deborah Lewis-Virges, is at 13.32% with about 200 fewer votes than Dinan.
This preliminary batch of results includes all mail-in ballots received on or before Friday, all ballots returned to drop boxes or vote centers on or before that day, and a portion of vote center ballots.
Votes from ballots received in the mail after Friday as well as those placed in drop boxes after that day have yet to be counted. With a high in-person voter turnout in East Palo Alto, the counts could shift with trailing candidates gaining momentum.
As of September, there were a total of 11,658 registered voters in East Palo Alto. The city’s small voter population means that winners can be determined by just a few dozen votes.
“Be aware that the election can change a lot until they’ve actually released all the ballots,” Dinan said in an interview.” You can see some pretty radical changes.”
Lincoln has ran twice for City Council. In 2020, he finished in fourth place, 69 votes behind current East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez. In 2022, he lost by just 19 votes.
“You have to do everything you can,” Lincoln said in an interview.”In the last two weeks we distributed about 5,000 door hangouts.”
Later voters tend to vote in contrast to early voters.
“People who cast their ballots later on vote very differently than the people who vote early,” Dinan said.” You’ll see a lot more Latino voters vote later.”
Official results may take weeks to be finalized.
In the 2022 City Council race, East Palo Alto did not certify the results until one month after Election Day with candidates swapping places as more ballots were counted.
“It was a super close race,” Dinan said.”I think we’re probably headed towards something like that going forward.”
An updated count is expected to be released Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., according to the San Mateo County Registration and Elections Division