31 votes separate Lynn Compton and Jimmy Paulding — and it's not over yet

Jimmy Paulding cut into Lynn Compton's lead in the razor-thin race for San Luis Obispo County's District 4 supervisor, the latest vote totals show.

Paulding now trails Compton by a mere 31 votes, down from 83 on election night, according to the county clerk's release on Friday night.

So far, 15,933 ballots have been counted in District 4, with more than 2,600 remaining. The next report will be released on Monday.

"This is a very close race and we look forward to a speedy conclusion. In the meantime, as the county finishes its work, we are awaiting the results like everyone else," Compton said.

Paulding said the process is "a bit nerve-racking."

"I'm hopeful I'm seeing a trend upward. I hope the trend continues and we remain optimistic," Paulding said.

The gap narrowed since the last report on early Wednesday morning, when Compton had an 83-vote lead with 12,107 votes counted.

The count will stretch beyond Monday because the remaining votes include 424 provisional ballots, 189 conditional voter registration ballots turned in by people who missed the voter registration deadline, and about 15 damaged ballots that couldn't be processed by a machine, according to a Thursday update from county Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong.

The race won't be decided until all of those ballots are tallied.

This election has been a nail-biter for residents countywide.

While the position is officially non-partisan, Paulding's campaign received support from the SLO County Progressives and SLO County Democrats, while Compton's campaign received support from the SLO County Republicans.

A Paulding victory would be a major upset. Not only would he be 20 years younger than the other four supervisors, he would be the first Democrat elected by District 4 voters to the county board in decades, and it would shift the board's political makeup.

There's countywide interest in this South County election in part because Compton is part of a three-person conservative majority along with North County supervisors Debbie Arnold and John Peschong. They often vote as a block.

Compton took office after she beat an appointed incumbent, Caren Ray, in 2014 by 1,502 votes, about 8 percentage points.

Other vote totals

Elsewhere in the county, incumbents continued to enjoy sizable leads in the latest vote tally.

Bruce Gibson, the left-leaning District 2 supervisor on the North Coast, claimed victory on Wednesday with a 1,941-vote lead. He maintained 59.1 percent in the Friday count.

Sheriff Ian Parkinson led over challenger Greg Clayton 61.5 percent to 38.4 percent of the vote on early Wednesday morning. That shifted slightly to 60.9 percent to 39.1 percent on Friday.

District Attorney Dan Dow had 64.5 percent to challenger Judge Mike Cummins' 35.4 percent, as of Friday.

And county Assessor Tom Bordonaro now leads David Boyer 61.1 percent to 38.8 percent.

There are still 11,716 ballots to count countywide, with 75,460 having been counted so far. The total of those ballots would add up to better than a 52 percent voter turnout.

Election results have been slow-coming apparently because of the record number of vote-by-mail ballots in this election.

Some 72 percent of registered voters requested to receive their ballots at home this year, compared to 44.4 percent in the last election. Those ballots take longer to process because election workers have to photocopy the ballot envelope and check each signature before the ballots are tallied.

This story was originally published June 8, 2018 at 6:23 PM with the headline "31 votes separate Lynn Compton and Jimmy Paulding — and it's not over yet."