Humboldt election update shows lead changes hold with 841 ballots left

Humboldt County’s latest primary update kept the same shape on the board: Audrey Hanks and Mary C. Burke held comfortable leads, Natalie Arroyo ran unopposed, and the ballots still left to process looked more likely to confirm the picture than rewrite it. The county’s June 11 report had shown 1,439 ballots remaining, and by midday Friday, June 12, the number of unprocessed ballots had fallen to 841.

Those 841 ballots were split among 286 provisional ballots, 520 vote-by-mail ballots and 35 ballots from voting locations. Even with that work still ahead, the countywide numbers were already leaning toward continuity. Humboldt had mailed ballots to 84,944 registered voters for the June 2 California Statewide Direct Primary Election, and by June 12 election workers had counted 39,558 ballots, putting turnout at 46.57 percent.

In the county contests most closely watched in the first post-primary update, the margins were already wide enough to make major movement unlikely. Hanks led the Assessor’s race with about 79 percent to Ben Larson’s 21 percent. Mary C. Burke led the Fifth District supervisor race with about 77 percent to Evan Schwartz’s 23 percent. Natalie Arroyo was unopposed in District 4, and other county offices, including Superintendent of Schools, Auditor-Controller and Clerk-Recorder, appeared set to stay with familiar leadership.

What the remaining ballots could still change was narrow. They could refine the final totals, but the size of the leads in the Assessor’s race and District 5 made a reversal improbable. The same was true for Arroyo’s unopposed run in District 4. The canvass still mattered, but mostly as a final accounting of a result that had already settled into place across the county.

The statewide picture was less settled, which is where Humboldt’s support for Tom Steyer comes into focus. Humboldt voters backed Steyer locally in one statewide contest, but that showing was not enough to keep him in the broader statewide race. That split is a reminder of how a county can lean one way while California as a whole moves by a different math. County officials said the June 2 results remained unofficial during the canvass, with final official results due to the Secretary of State by July 3 and statewide certification set for July 10. After nearly 600 uncounted November 2025 special-election ballots were found in a locked drop box earlier this year, every update in this cycle has drawn a sharper eye, and this one pointed to stability rather than upheaval.