Omar Lazo’s Lead Grows to 5,974 in Uncalled School Board Race After New Mail Count

Omar Lazo widened his lead over Brenda M. Diaz in the race for the at-large seat on the Montgomery County Board of Education after the first new batch of mail-in ballots was counted Thursday, according to unofficial State Board of Elections results. The race has not been called.

Lazo has 139,633 votes (50.7%) to Diaz’s 133,659 (48.6%), a lead of 5,974, according to the board’s Montgomery County results page, last refreshed at 10:56 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5. Before the new count, Lazo led by 4,523.

What the new mail count showed

The update posted at 10:09 p.m. Thursday added mail-in votes only. In this race, Lazo’s mail-in total rose from 21,039 to 26,122, and Diaz’s from 22,483 to 26,115. That is 5,083 new mail-in votes for Lazo and 3,632 for Diaz, so Lazo won about 58% of the new mail-in votes cast for the two candidates.

Diaz had led the mail-in count after election night. Lazo now has seven more mail-in votes than Diaz, 26,122 to 26,115.

Vote type	Omar Lazo	Brenda M. Diaz
Early voting	41,926	37,691
Election Day	71,585	69,853
Mail-in (counted so far)	26,122	26,115
Provisional	Not yet counted	Not yet counted
Total	139,633	133,659

What is still out

The state’s most recent mail-in ballot report, as of Nov. 4, shows 93,847 mail-in ballots received in Montgomery County. About 66,300 mail-in ballots have been counted so far, based on the mail-in total in the governor’s race on the county results page, which leaves roughly 27,500 received ballots still to be counted. That is our estimate from the state’s figures, not a number the state reports.

Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can still arrive, and provisional ballots will be canvassed beginning Nov. 12, according to a State Board of Elections news release (page 2).

The math from here

In the mail-in ballots counted so far, about 79% included a vote for either Lazo or Diaz, compared with the number of mail-in votes cast for governor. If the roughly 27,500 remaining received ballots follow that pattern, they would hold about 21,700 votes in this race. To pull even, Diaz would need about 64% of them, before late-arriving mail-in ballots and provisional ballots are counted. So far she has 50.0% of the two-candidate mail-in vote.

That is arithmetic, not a forecast: the remaining ballots could break differently, and the late mail-in and provisional counts are not yet known. Our video explainer walks through how this kind of math works. Montgomery Perspective also looked at the race’s remaining ballots in “Can Diaz Catch Lazo?” using numbers from before Thursday’s count.

Our election night interview with Lazo covers his priorities, and the latest numbers in every Montgomery County race are on our live results page. Results are unofficial until every ballot is counted and the county certifies them.

---