With 19,370 ballots counted by the time the Humboldt County Elections Office threw it in last night, the only two contested races on the local ballot were very dramatic blowouts.

In the Fifth District, with 3,710 votes counted, supervisor candidate Mary Burke — the heir apparent, endorsed by Steve Madrone and most mainstream organizations that customarily endorse people — has 2,725 of those votes, or 73.5 percent.

Her opponent, Evan Schwartz, has 985 votes, or 26.5 percent.

Same story in the countywide race for assessor, where aspirant Ben Larson ended up running something of an insurgent campaign, inveighing against the current standards and practices of the office. It did not resonate. With 16,977 votes counted, Larson has only 3,792 of them — 22.3 percent.

Audrey Hanks, the current deputy assessor, has 13,185 votes, or 77.7 percent.

But how many votes are left to count, in this era of slow, slow counting in California? Unknown. Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters Juan Pablo Cervantes will likely spend the next couple of days rounding up an estimate.

We can look to history for a guess. Four years ago, in the last off-year primary, there were 34,862 votes counted, by the time all was said and done. If that were the case this year, that would mean a little bit less than half the votes have been counted.

Doesn’t that mean that Schwartz and Larson could flip it? 

Technically … sure? But not really. 

If Larson and Schwartz were to pull it out, that means the remaining ballots would have to be as lopsized as the the ones already counted — only in the other direction. And this is so mathematically improbable that it might as well be impossible.

Fifty percent of the vote is a huge sample of the entire electorate. If you’re want to believe that it is wrong — that Schwartz and/or Larson still have a chance — you’d have to believe that the people whose votes have been counted so far are dramatically, dramatically different than the people whose votes have yet to be counted.

And though past elections have shown that these populations are historically a little different — the people who vote as soon as they receive their ballot are a little more likely to be more conservative, on the whole, and so conservative people show up disproportionately in the early returns — they’re not so crazy different as all that. Maybe a couple of percentage points here and there.

I write all this here because of backlash, in recent years, against the media calling elections. The media doesn’t get to call elections! That is the job of election officials!

Which — sure. But c’mon, now.