Mendo County is in, Trinity County is in, Del Norte County is in. With only Humboldt and Sonoma left to report the final results of the June 5 election (plus a couple of thousand provisional ballots in Marin County), election night third-place finisher Norman Solomon may yet overtake Republican Dan Roberts for a spot in the November general election.

It’ll be a damned close-run thing. Solomon polled slightly stronger in Sonoma and Marin counties, where the bulk of the remaining votes lie, but Roberts easily blew past the leftist Democrat here in Humboldt.

Solomon has to make up 600 votes out of about 17,000 remaining. Looks good at first glance, but the situation is more dire for Norm than you’d first expect. The bulk of the remaining 17,000 will go to other candidates entirely. If we can follow my earlier cocktail-napkin math, about 30 percent of the total the Solomon camp says are still out there should be divided between Solomon and Roberts. That’s 5,100 contested votes.

Solomon needs around 2,848 of those hypothetical 5,100 to succeed — something like 56 percent. He needs to grab 11 votes for every nine that Roberts grabs. His position, in other words, is slightly worse than it was a couple of weeks ago. And that’s after the Solomon stronghold of Mendocino County is all said and done.

Press release from the Solomon campaign:

Democrat Norman Solomon has reduced the raw vote count separating him and Republican Dan Roberts by nearly 60 percent in the two weeks since the June 5 primary election in California’s 2nd Congressional District.

At the midpoint of the 28 days allowed by California law for the six county elections officials in the 2nd Congressional District to complete and report their elections results to California’s Secretary of State, Solomon has narrowed the raw vote count from 1,397 as of the last report issued on election night down to 596 as of the most-recent update issued Friday evening.  And there remain more than 17,000 ballots to be counted throughout the district.

“I have consistently maintained — since election night — that I am confident once all of the votes cast in this race are actually counted that Norman Solomon will have earned a top-two finish and advance to the general election,” declared Tom Higgins, Solomon’s political consultant.  “This point is being borne out as the outstanding votes are continually being counted and included in the total vote tally for the district,” continued Higgins.

Solomon has winnowed the election night 1 percent difference between himself and Roberts down to 0.39 percent. The contest remains one designated by California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen as a “close contest” due to the still and increasingly unresolved question as to who the top two finishers will be once all the votes cast in the race are counted (http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/close-contests/).

Three counties — Del Norte, Mendocino, and Trinity — have completed counting all of their ballots and issued their final reports.

Sonoma County has the bulk of the remaining votes — absentees and provisional — to be included in the contest with an estimated 8,700 of those within the 2nd Congressional District; Sonoma County is not providing any interim updates and is expected to issue its final report at the end of this week or within the first half of next week.

Humboldt County has approximately 6,500 absentee and provisional ballots remaining to be included in its final count which is expected to be issued this week.

Marin County has issued two updates to date and has approximately 2,000 provisional ballots remaining to be included in its final report which is also expected to be issued sometime this week.

“Dan Roberts cannot look to gain any further vote margin out of his best-performing counties since Del Norte and Trinity counties have already issued their final numbers,” said Higgins.  “I am further buoyed Norman Solomon will advance to the general election given the overwhelming majority of the outstanding votes are in Solomon’s better-performing counties of Sonoma and Marin.  And late-return absentee and provisional ballots historically perform more like votes cast at the polls on election day which further benefits Solomon.  That remains how and why I believe Norman Solomon will overtake Dan Roberts to secure the second-place finish he has earned once all the votes are counted in this race,” concluded Higgins.

All 58 county elections officials have until Tuesday, July 3 to certify their elections results to California’s Secretary of State as provided for in California’s Elections Code.