Nearly 8,000 Uncounted Votes in Close Mission Viejo Election

Who won the election for Mission Viejo City Council? New numbers recently released by the Orange County Registrar of Voters reveals the results may change before every vote is counted.

Challenger Wendy Bucknum trails Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht by 247 votes as of yesterday's vote count. That's fewer votes than she trailed by early Wednesday morning after all electronic votes had been tallied. Then Bucknum trailed by 302 votes.

The percentage-difference of the total votes between the two candidates remains the same at .5 percent.

Now 7,918 Mission Viejo votes have not been counted, the registrar website says.

"That was a surprise to me," Bucknum said Friday morning.

In an e-mail to supporters Wednesday, Bucknum said "it looks like we're going to end up a few votes short of our goal of election to the Mission Viejo City Council."

Now her message is different:

"I did send a message out saying it looks like we’re a few votes shy, but I did not have that information about the provisional ballots and absentee ballots."

Schlicht has 23.1 percent of the total vote count and Bucknum has 22.6 percent.

Here are the votes that remain uncounted:

Vote-by-Mails: 5,667

Provisionals: 2,251

Provisional ballots aren't counted until the elligibility of the voter is verified.

Each voter could vote for two of the six candidates for city council on each ballot. So far 57,205 votes have been counted, which make up a maximum 28,600 possible ballots. That means at least 27 percent of Mission Viejo voter ballots have not yet been counted.

Also left to count are the county's estimated 17,000 paper ballots.