Jose Nuno now trails Mike Morowit by 77 votes in the battle for the second seat on the Manteca City Council.

The additional counting of 1,021 mail-in ballots on Friday  that were cast in Manteca inched Nuno closer to Morowit, He trailed the incumbent by 87 votes after Thursday’s update.

David Breitenbucher extended his lead over Morowit to 491 votes to increase his margin by 68 votes compared to the count on Thursday. The two top vote getters are elected to the council.

Ben Cantu increased his lead over incumbent Mayor Steve DeBrum to 764 votes compared to 677 on Thursday.

“We’re waiting to see what Monday brings,” DeBrum said.

Cantu now has 10,946 votes and DeBrum 10,182.

The 21,138 votes counted so far is a 53.9 percent turnout based on 39,149 registered Manteca voters going into Election Day.

Since there is no way of knowing where the remaining ballots were cast in San Joaquin County, there is no way of determining with any certainty whether the current leads are sufficient to withstand a chance as more votes are counted.

If the Manteca turnout was 60 percent, then there would be 2,388 votes left to count.

The San Joaquin County Elections Department is struggling with a massive surge of mail-in votes as well as those dropped off at polling places on Election Day leaving 92,700 votes left to count after the in-person Election Day counting and those mail-in ballots received early enough to verify signatures so they could be counted after the polls closed.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com