Despite Pedro Nava’s current lead in the race for 35th district state assembly seat, both Nava and Pohl continue to await the final tallying of the remaining absentee ballots, with neither side accepting victory or conceding defeat.

According to the California Secretary of State website as of 8:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Pedro Nava held a 53.2 percent lead over Bob Pohl’s 46.8 percent with all 211 district precincts reporting. Both candidates are still waiting for the Santa Barbara County clerk’s office to sort and finish tallying the estimated 50,000 absentee ballots, which may swing the election’s outcome.

Lacie Grisley, Pohl’s campaign manager, said the Pohl campaign met with Joe Holland, the Santa Barbara County clerk-recorder-assessor, to discuss how the county plans to deal with the still uncounted ballots. She said Holland told her the ballots were currently being sorted to determine which ballots were pertinent to the 35th district race.

The ballots will then be verified by signature today, Grisley said, and the county will begin counting the ballots Friday.

“On Friday, we’ll definitely have a better idea of what’s going on,” Grisley said. “But it all really depends on the pace of the election ballots counting.”

Grisley said that, by her estimates, the Pohl campaign is currently down by about 2,000 votes in Santa Barbara County and is also down by 5,000 votes in Ventura County.

Today, the Pohl campaign released a statement in which Pohl thanked his supporters and pledged to continue to fight for the issues addressed in his campaign platform.

“I’ll continue to work on the issues that defined my campaign: education, the environment and healthcare,” the statement read. “Thank you, and I look forward to the time when our paths cross again.”

As of Wednesday night, Nava’s campaign had not released a statement and campaign officials could not be reached at press time.