Preliminary election results for the June primary show Sue Novasel and Kevin Brown leading a six-way race for El Dorado County District 5 Supervisor and South Lake Tahoe residents voting to repeal the city’s paid parking program.

But with 34,362 ballots counted and reported by early Wednesday morning, county election officials said there were nearly 7,000 more ballots left to count as of Thursday. That means results potentially could change for some races, including the District 5 county supervisor race.

“The code allows us 28 days to certify (the election). It doesn’t usually take us that long, but we have that timeframe,” said Linda Webster, assistant registrar of voters for El Dorado County.

About 6,000 of the uncounted ballots are vote-by-mail ballots that people dropped off at polling locations on Election Day. Another 600 are provisional ballots and a few hundred more are vote-by-mail ballots picked up from post offices.

El Dorado County Election Department will update election results on its website as the remaining ballots are processed.

“We have to check the signatures and review (the vote-by-mail ballots) before they can be run through the counter. When people wait until Election Day to drop them off, they won’t be in the counts on election night,” Webster said. “I don’t think the public always understands what it takes. But we review every signature on every vote-by-mail ballot that comes back to us.”

In the six-way race for El Dorado County District 5 supervisor, 4,134 votes were counted on Election Day. The supervisor district has 17,702 registered voters and the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November general election.

About 900 of the ballots remaining to be counted are vote-by-mail ballots from District 5 voters.

Sue Novasel, of Meyers, is leading the District 5 supervisor race with 1,135 votes, or 27 percent of the vote. That’s a 398-vote lead over Kevin Brown, of Pollock Pines, who is in second place with 19 percent.

Brown is leading third place finisher Angela Swanson, of South Lake Tahoe, by only 51 votes. And with 17.8 percent of the vote, Swanson has only a six-vote lead over fourth place finisher, Kenny Curtzwiler, of Meyers.

Gerri Grego, of South Lake Tahoe, is in fifth place with 499 votes, or 12 percent, and Teresa Piper is in sixth place with 235 votes, or nearly 6 percent.

Novasel said she thanks district voters for their support and promises to continue to be a strong advocate for economic growth, public safety, social services and environmental protection if she advances to the November runoff.

“If the outcome holds true, there is still a lot of work ahead between now and November. Now more than ever it is vital to have a Tahoe basin resident who will fight for critical funding,” Novasel said.

In the race for District 4 supervisor, which represents northwest El Dorado County, Howard Penn and Michael Ranalli are leading an eight-way race, each with nearly 22 percent of the 7,943 votes counted. There are 23,303 registered voters in District 4 and Penn and Ranalli have roughly 800-vote leads over the next closest candidates.

City residents who want to repeal South Lake Tahoe’s fledgling paid parking program apparently got their wish. With 1,858 Measure P votes counted, 68 percent favored repeal and 32 percent opposed repeal. Voter turnout stands at 21 percent with 8,732 voters eligible to vote on the measure.

Measure P would end paid parking at Lakeview Commons and Lakeside Beach effective August 31. It would not affect paid parking on Bellamy Court and Transit Way, which would remain in place.

The delayed repeal lets South Lake Tahoe collect another summer of revenue to pay down the debt it issued to buy its paid parking kiosks. But the program would end with the city still owing an estimated $150,000 for paid parking kiosks it bought just a couple years ago.

Measure L, a tax renewal for South Lake Tahoe Public Library, had strong support from voters. Preliminary results with 3,250 votes counted show the tax measure passing 78.5 percent to 21.5 percent. The library “zone of benefit” eligible to vote on the measure has 13,950 registered voters, putting turnout for Measure L at 24 percent. If approved, the 12-year tax renewal would continue a $20 per home annual assessment, which could be increased by up to 3 percent per year to account for inflation.