There’s good news and bad news, and then some possibly good news again, and then some possibly bad news again. The good news: latest vote counts have cut Strickland’s lead in half, down to just under 1,300 votes. The bad news: the votes out of Santa Barbara County, Jackson’s strongest base, are pretty much all counted. It’s all up to the provisionals coming out of Ventura County now; if they trend Strickland as the rest of Ventura’s votes have–or even just 50-50–Strickland will eke this one out.

The possibly good news: provisional ballots are usually new voters, and those are quite likely new Democratic voters who might be expected to trend our way contra the overall County trend. The possibly bad news: those new Democratic voters often have a tendency to vote for the top of the ticket only, failing to vote for Democrats downballot.

What will end up happening? It’s anybody’s guess. The VC Star has more:

Elections officials in Ventura County began processing provisional ballots this week but are not expected to release the first results from those ballots until Monday.

In votes tallied thus far, Strickland has about a 5 percentage lead in the Ventura County portion of the district. Jackson would have to at least reverse that advantage among provisional ballots — perhaps unlikely, but something political observers say is possible given that many such ballots are cast by newly registered voters, who this year were predominantly Democrats.

With 401,864 votes now tabulated, Strickland leads by about one-third of a percentage point.

Looks like we’re in a for ride. As painful as the wait is, though, it’s good to know that the democratic process is being respected. Better to get the right result with a wait, than the wrong result too quickly.