Herman Doornenbal and Brad DeBoer were leaders in the race for Oakdale Irrigation District seats based on the election count late Tuesday night, Nov. 7.

The canvass of the Consolidated District Election vote began Wednesday, Nov. 8 at the Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters office.

Unofficial results show incumbent Herman Doornenbal leading in his bid to retain his seat on the OID board. He had a 301 to 268 vote lead over challenger Don Taro in Division 2 in the results reported out shortly before 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7. There were two write-in votes as well.

In Division 5, Brad DeBoer had a much larger lead, 450 votes to 247 votes for Grover Francis as both seek to fill the post. No write-ins were cast in that race.

For the Valley Home School Board seat, results showed the two candidates, Erin Wells and Mary Beth Carpenter, each with 75 votes.

The Measure S library tax initiative, to continue collecting a one-eighth cent sales tax to benefit the Stanislaus County Library System and its branches, overwhelmingly passed, 82 to 18 percent, with 27,259 “Yes” votes and 6,318 “No” votes cast.

There were 238,666 voters eligible to vote in the Tuesday election. The Elections Office has more than 15,000 timely received vote by mail (VBM) ballots remaining to process. This includes checking the signature on each envelope against the signature located on the original affidavit of registration. Following this signature verification, each of the VBM ballot envelopes must be sorted into one of the 145 precincts in which they would have voted had they not voted by mail. Additional tasks include opening, flattening and processing each of the ballots through the high speed ballot scanning equipment to tabulate these remaining ballots.

In addition, nearly 700 provisional ballots and over 400 miscellaneous ballots also require examination. This process will begin following the scanning and uploading of voter signatures located on the rosters from the 145 polling locations. These signatures and those on the VBM ballots must be reviewed to determine who has voted prior to the processing of the provisional ballots.

Until that canvass is completed, the results will not be verified.

Look for a follow up story in the Nov. 15 issue of The Leader.