The race for the District 2 city council seat continues to get tighter and tighter with every update from the Stanislaus County elections office.

Incumbent city councilmember Rebecka Monez has seen her lead over retired businessman Milt Trieweiler shrink to just 18 votes — 1,441 to 1,423 — with an unknown number of ballots yet to be counted.

According to county Registrar of Voters Donna Linder, her office has counted 143,977 ballots, with just under 48,000 mail-in ballots still to be processed.

“The Elections Office continues to scan each vote-by-mail envelope to credit voters with casting a ballot and check the signature on each envelope against the signature located on each voter’s original affidavit of registration,” Linder’s update explained. “Ballots are then sorted, and prepared for count. California law now extends the time period VBM ballots must be accepted beyond Election Day, increasing the number of ballots to be processed. VBM ballots postmarked timely on Election Day can be received for seven additional days."

That means that properly postmarked mail-in ballots that trickled in as late as Tuesday night must be accepted. But because there’s no way of determining how many of the nearly 48,000 mail-in ballots are from District 2 until the envelopes are opened for processing, there’s no way of knowing how many votes remain outstanding. The race could be over, or there could be hundreds of votes still to count.

Currently, the candidates are tied with 1,117 mail-in votes, while Monez leads 324-306 in ballots cast at voting centers.

The last update had Trieweiler trailing by more than 50 votes.

Neither candidate was available for comment.

The only other local race with any drama is the one for Hughson City Council, where the top two vote recipients garner seats.

Currently, Alan McFadon is well in front with 867 votes, while Sam T. Rush sits in second with 702 votes, a mere 12 votes ahead of Susana Vasquez. Billy Gonzales (489) and Abel Morin (249) are a distant fourth and fifth.

As of Tuesday night, the California Secretary of State was reporting a 61.1 percent voter turnout, which is much higher than the 50.08 percent turnout recorded in the November 2022 gubernatorial election, but still smaller than the 80.67 percent turnout seen in the 2020 presidential election.