UPDATE, 4:07 p.m.:

The Humboldt County Elections Office released its first post-election report this afternoon, and as expected, it doesn’t really alter the results. Scafani is still on track to beat back the recall effort.

Another 34 votes have been tallied in the latest count, bringing the ballot total to 387. Before those new votes came in, the recall effort was failing 44.19 percent to 55.81 percent; now it’s failing 44.96 percent to 55.04 percent. 

Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Juan Cervantes told the Outpost earlier today that he expects this to be the most substantial post-election report before he certifies this thing, which could happen within the next couple of weeks.

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Original post:

PREVIOUSLY

• Blue Lake Recall Effort Falls Short for Two Council Members, But Election Will Proceed for Scafani

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Elise Scafani, a Blue Lake city councilmember and the city’s backup mayor, has very likely survived a voter-initiated effort to recall her from office.

The “no” votes on the recall question account for just shy of 56 percent of the returns reported in the final Election Day tally. In all, 353 of the city’s 866 registered voters (40.8 percent) have had their ballots tallied thus far, with 156 calling for Scafani’s ouster versus 197 saying she should remain in office.

While there’s likely a handful of ballots left to tally, there’s no reason to believe that they’ll alter the results. A new rule from the U.S. Postal Service, which took effect on Christmas Eve, means that ballots dropped into mailboxes yesterday may not be postmarked until today or later. In California, ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to count.

The Blue Lake electorate has been bitterly divided over the past year. In May, a group of residents mounted a recall effort against three city council members — Scafani, Kat Napier and Mayor John Sawatzky — following the abrupt and unexplained exit of longtime City Manager Amanda “Mandy” Mager. 

Mager’s supporters believed she had been forced out by the council majority, though officially it was framed as a mutual agreement.

The recall effort required three distinct signature-gathering campaigns, one for each office-holder, and in the end proponents fell just short of the 250-voter threshold necessary to trigger elections for both Napier (four signatures shy) and Sawatzky (five shy).

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DOCUMENT: Final Election Night Results