The final count for the Democratic primary for the at-large D.C. Council seat now held by Vincent Orange won’t be back for 10 days, because election officials have to tally up 3,830 absentee ballots. Also waiting to be counted: Provisional ballots, ballots cast “curbside” by disabled voters, and some absentee ballots that were mailed out but hand-delivered to the polls yesterday.

So with Orange leading closest rival Sekou Biddle by 543 votes in the election day and early vote tally, where are those other votes coming from?

Here’s a ward-by-ward breakdown, thanks to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, on where special ballots were cast. Note that these include Democratic, Republican, and Statehood Green votes, so there are some that won’t affect the Orange v. Biddle outcome—but only 4,919 votes were cast in the non-Democratic primaries, so most of these are probably Democratic votes.

• Ward 1: 402 votes (Biddle won the ward, 57.4 percent to 23.2 percent)
• Ward 2: 410 votes (Biddle won 62.2 to 12.8)
• Ward 3: 313 votes (Biddle won 70.9 to 6.1)
• Ward 4: 441 votes (Biddle won 41.3 to 39.2)
• Ward 5: 377 votes (Orange won 57.4 to 22.3)
• Ward 6: 502 votes (Biddle won 49.7 to 28.2)
• Ward 7:  543 votes (Orange won 63.1 to 15.7)
• Ward 8: 487 votes (Orange won 63.8 to 12.2)

An additional 392 provisional ballots were cast at early voting locations, but officials don’t know which ward they go with.

What’s that all mean? Probably that the election is likely to wind up closer still.

Photo by Matt Dunn