El Dorado County still has over 12,000 votes to count

With just 13 votes separating two candidates and deciding who will be on the South Lake Tahoe City Council, thousands of uncounted absentee and provisional ballots could actually change the outcome.

El Dorado County election officials told South Tahoe Now today that an estimated 12,000 absentee ballots and 1,000 provisional ballots may take until Thanksgiving to count. By law they have 18 days to certify the election and all votes must be counted by then.

There are no official figures on how many of those ballots came from South Lake Tahoe voters but an unconfirmed figure of just over 900 has been floating around.

Incumbent Angela Swanson retained her seat on the council after the precinct ballots were counted, leading challenger Austin Sass by 13 votes.

In June's County Supervisor race, the two that were vying for the seat from Area 5 was determined days after the election because of the same scenario. Kevin Brown was the second highest vote getter, earning him a chance in the November election, but Kenny Curtzwiler overtook him in the end. Just a few votes separated second and fourth place in June.

At 12:59 a.m. Wednesday morning, 100% of the precinct ballots had the following results:

Wendy David.......18.00%.......1205 votes
Tom Davis.........15.56%.......1042 votes
Angela Swanson....14.12%........945 votes
Austin Sass.......13.92%........932 votes
Brooke Laine......13.35%........894 votes
Matt Palacio......12.53%........839 votes
Bruce Grego.......12.29%........823 votes

South Tahoe Now will post election results each day that El Dorado County Elections releases new results. They said they'd try to do so daily.

The top three will take a seat in the Council Chambers in January.