Petrelis Files

978 Write-In Votes Need Counting by Elections Dept

It was quite a low turnout for last week's election in San Francisco and the underwhelming number of voters had no impact on the Elections Department, in terms of counting the 978 mayoral write-in ballots.

Today's new numbers show 32 write-ins tallied with yours truly in the lead, wow, with 16 votes which equals to 0.01% of total ballots cast. Should it take more than a week for our local election officials to determine write-ins?

I don't think so and now is a good time for the department to develop a sub-group of counters, solely for write-ins, and better practices that would give candidates and voters answers more quickly.