OROVILLE — With all 13 voting centers reporting in, sitting Supervisors Tod Kimmelshue and Doug Teeter are maintaining their wide-margin leads over respective challengers Joanna Warrens and Julie Threet.
At 5 p.m. Wednesday, District 4 incumbent Kimmelshue was leading over Warrens 4,449-2,190. Meanwhile, in District 5, incumbent Teeter continued to lead at 6,313 votes over Threet’s 2,377.
Voter turnout remains low in the early count with only 31.96% of registered voters turning in ballots. Butte County has 120,112 registered voters but only 38,390 showed up for this primary.
Kimmelshue called the lead humbling and was hopeful for the election.
“Any time you win an election it’s a humbling experience,” Kimmelshue said. “The people of the fourth district had confidence in me to be their representative and to lead them on the county level, so it’s always humbling, and it’s an honor to represent those people in the fourth district and Butte County in general.”
Kimmelshue went on to compliment his fellow board members.
“It has been a real pleasure to work with my board colleagues,” Kimmelshue said. “I think we work well together. We have different views on different items but we all have a mutual respect for each other and have the best interest of Butte County at heart.”
Warrens said despite falling behind in the count, the election cycle was a positive experience.
“I wish Tod the best, and I learned a lot,” Warrens said. “The Butte County community is just awesome, and I’m glad I had a chance to meet with the people.”
Warrens said she plans to continue her work on the projects she has expressed passion about throughout her campaign.
“I’m not stopping,” Warrens said. “I’m going to do everything I can to help the mobile home residents. It’s something I’m committed to because that is an underserved population.”
Teeter responded to the large margin in his lead against Threet.
“I’ve never had over 70% before so it makes you feel good about what you’re doing for your citizens,” he said. “I think having Sheriff (Kory) Honea as an endorsement, when you have a sheriff everyone loves and he’s saying ‘hey Doug helps with public safety’ that’s a huge benefit to getting reelected I believe.”
Threet did not respond to calls for comment.
Running unopposed, District 1 Supervisor Bill Connelly has garnered 100% of the vote in his district.
Counting ballots
At the Candace J. Grubbs Hall of Records, volunteers spent Wednesday making sure votes were counted. Butte County Elections Official Keaton Denlay said Butte County has considerably updated its county process in recent years.
“As a Voters Choice Act county, we’ve really modernized the way that California does elections, and a lot of that comes with the vote by mail and the security that comes with that — the signature verification of voters, being able to track the status of their ballot and using the My Ballot system on our website,” Denlay said. “So a lot of those features are newer to elections, but we’re very happy to have them.”
Once opened, ballots are run through tabulation machines that count them. Physically damaged ballots are duplicated by volunteers to be scanned again. Alternatively, if the machine can’t make out the marks on the ballot, it is sent to other volunteers to determine voter intent.
“We don’t want any voter to lose their vote because they didn’t follow the instructions properly, or because it got wet in the mail,” Denlay said. “Stuff like that’s not going to invalidate somebody’s vote; we make sure to save all of those.”
Votes will be counted throughout the week and updated again on Friday. Next week, the process of hand-counting a portion of the votes will begin to see if the hand-counted number coincides with those counted in the computer.
Denlay said 98% of this year’s votes were mailed in rather than done in person.
Larger elections
In voting for candidates and measures at the higher level, Butte County found itself overwhelmingly in favor of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the respective Democrat and Republican races while showing clear skepticism of California’s Proposition 1.
For the Democratic race, current president Biden took 91% of early Butte County votes at 12,843 with the next closest being Marianne Williamson at only 489 votes, or 3.46%. Former president Trump also saw a large margin in Butte County, though smaller than Biden, at 81.53% over Nikki Haley’s 15%. In votes, Trump received support from 13,837 Republican voters versus his former U.N. Ambassador Haley’s 2,656.
So far, Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa swept 54.93% of the Butte County vote at 20,378 votes followed by Democrats Rose Penelope Yee at 11,867 and Mike Doran at 4,856.
For United States Senator, Butte County leaned heavily in favor of Republican Steve Garvey who brought in 39.47% of the local vote at 14,186 followed by Democrat Adam Schiff who secured 10,233 votes and then Katie Porter at 3,541 votes.
California’s District 1 state senator race saw two Republicans going head to head, but early results are showing Megan Dahle leading 20,917-6,346 against David Finnell. Meanwhile, in the state assembly, James Gallagher has brought in 22,201 Butte County votes so far against his opponent Aaron Draper who has received 14,719 votes.
Butte County residents are leaning against Prop 1, an effort to redirect mental health funding toward housing with 55.23% of voters opposing it. The proposition drummed up some concerns in recent months that local behavioral health programs might see cuts if passed.
These results are still unofficial and will be updated again later in the week.
