Big news from the most recent tally from the Humboldt County Office of Elections, which released its most recent report from the Nov. 8 election just a few moments ago.

The big news: G. Mario Fernandez has pulled ahead of John Fullerton for the Eureka City Council Third Ward seat, and seems on pace to take the election:

Elsewhere, as we see, Juan Pablo Cervantes is cruising to an easy victory over Tiffany Hunt-Nielsen in the clerk/recorder/registrar race, and Renee Contreras de Loach has a commanding lead for the Fifth Ward seat.

Elsewhere: Julie Ryan has easily defeated incumbent Alan Bongio, the embattled Humboldt County Planning Commissioner, for his seat on the Humboldt Community Services District. Mike Morgan lost his bid to return to the Trinidad City Council. Kyle Conley, Christina Mobley and Mike Johnson are in fine shape in the Fortuna City Council race.  

Here’s another big turnaround, though — a big shift in Dave Meserve’s Arcata Earth Flag measure, which would require the city to hang the Earth Flag on top of city-owned poles, with the American flag and the California flag underneath. The measure looked crushed on Election Night, but the late vote-by-mail ballots have swung that around sharply — it’s now 49.4 percent yes and 50.6 percent no and looks like it could be headed for passage.

View full results here.

There should be about 10,000 votes left to count, according to numbers released by the elections office shortly after the polls closed last week. The general rule is that these things trend leftward, and they sure did this time, with Cervantes and Fernandez picking up big gains. Expect more of that. 

But tune in next week for the definitive result!