SAN JOSE, Calif. — Mystery, sniping and challenged ballots — all swirl around the extraordinary recount in the Congressional District 16 race as it drags into its third week.

Who will emerge the victor — if anyone — between Assemblymember Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian who are in a dead heat for second place?

There may be no hanging chads in this ballot counting, but the much awaited outcome is still very much unknown.

On April 15, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties began the ambitious task of recounting the more than 182,000 votes cast in the March primary race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. Since then, nearly 175,000 ballots have been pulled out of storage boxes and rescanned by machines. As of Friday afternoon, Low had a one vote lead on Simitian.

The political veterans ended the primary with 30,249 votes each behind former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. While there was no trigger for an automatic recount in this race to break the stunning tie, Jonathan Padilla, a 2020 and 2024 Biden delegate and former Liccardo staffer requested it and has been paying for it through a super PAC called Count the Vote.

In Santa Clara County — where more than three-quarters of the vote was cast — the counting has slowed to a trickle in recent days. By Tuesday afternoon, the seventh day of the recount, the county had counted 175 of 199 precincts. The next day, only nine new precincts were reported and on Thursday only three were added. Friday saw even fewer precincts with just two being added to the total tally.

The slowdown has frustrated Padilla’s attorney, Matthew Alvarez of Rutan and Tucker, who told The Mercury News that the remaining precincts have been taking so long because county workers “are struggling to find all the ballots that they need to be counting.”

“It’s their incompetence that’s costing us money,” Alvarez said, referring to the $12,000 a day they’re spending on the recount in Santa Clara County. “It’s their inability to keep track of ballots by precinct and make sure the same amount of ballots are counted in the original count as the recount that is making this last longer and keeping the prices up.”

Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters spokesperson Michael Borja disagreed with the claim that ballots had been misplaced. He said that when ballots arrive, they are organized into precincts, but since not all ballots come in together there are separate boxes for each precinct.

“One complete precinct could be spread out in different boxes,” he said of why it’s taking some time. “We’re tracking down all the precinct batches and making them whole.”

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