Wondering who won the Sacramento mayor’s race? Don’t hold your breath. Prepare to wait | Opinion

In Sacramento's March mayoral primary, Flojaune Cofer finished dead last among the top four candidates on election night. By the time the counting was done weeks later, she had won decisively. Call it the Cofer Comeback.

On Tuesday night, once the initial results of the general election were released, Cofer was behind again. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty raced out to a healthy lead over the public health activist. Does Cofer have another comeback in her? Sacramento County elections officials are giving themselves nearly three days to provide another update, until late Friday afternoon.

The county is among the slower ones in the state so far this election in counting the ballots. And for voters who follow politics closely, the slow pace of progress can be maddening.

But there isn't exactly an army of vote counters in Sacramento County. Out of a total county budget of about $9 billion , supervisors set aside only $14 million to register voters and run elections with 37 staffers. Expect only two updates a week until this modest-size team of tabulators is done with their job.

The trickle of new information has become somewhat of a Sacramento tradition.

"We've been posting on the same schedule for more than five years – at least three times on Election Night (after Vote Centers close, we have to report every two hours until all in-person Vote Center Ballots are counted) and every Friday and Tuesday at 4 pm until certification," said elections spokesman Kenneth Casparis.

As of Thursday, Sacramento County had counted ballots from 35% of the area's voters. According to monitoring by the California Secretary of State's office, only nine of our 58 counties had counted a lower percentage of voters by that time. And Sacramento has the lowest count by registered voter percentage in the region. By comparison, El Dorado County by Thursday had managed to count ballots from 62% of its registered voters.

Couldn't Sacramento County at least give more frequent updates on the ballot counting? That turns out to have a downside.

"In order to post results, we have to actually stop counting votes several hours before to allow for our adjudication teams to get through all of the challenged ballots," Casparis said. "If we did that more often, it would actually take longer to get complete results out to our residents."

At least the county's weeks-long rollout system is no secret.

"We make our reporting schedule available to all voters, candidates, and the general public so that all interested persons are informed in advance when election results will be posted to help alleviate post-election anxiety," Casparis said.

In the case of Cofer, in March there turned out to be a huge wave of support of voters who cast their ballots on election day thanks to an impressive last-minute, get-out-the-vote drive. It was those ballots not yet counted that drove her to a primary victory.

Can it happen again? History only reveals so much.

In that March primary, less than 40% of registered voters bothered to cast a ballot. The November turnout will be much higher, making election cycle bigger and different. In March, there were six candidates for voters to choose from. On Tuesday, there were two.

A handful of other local elections hang in the balance of the remaining vote count. Measure O, a parcel tax to help fund the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District, is holding onto a slim lead . In Galt, a bond measure to fund its joint union elementary school district is barely below the 55% passage threshold.

The election simply isn't over. The last tabulation i s scheduled to be revealed Dec. 3 at 4:15 p.m.

We will have to wait whether we like it or not.