Fewer than 300 votes separate the two candidates for state representative in House District 53, based on incomplete ballot counts, which has left the race without a clear winner.

Preliminary, unofficial results reported by Deschutes County shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 9 put Democrat Emerson Levy ahead of Republican Michael Sipe by just 278 votes. Sipe has not conceded.

As each candidate begins to take down campaign signs, voters and candidates must wait until Wednesday by 5 p.m. for updated results. That’s one week after most ballots were cast and counted, raising the question of when will voters know who won.

The only answer: Wait and see.

“There are many votes left to count. And probably recount,” Sipe said in a Facebook post dated Wednesday, Nov. 9.

“We are cautiously optimistic and waiting for all ballots to be counted,” Levy said in a tweet the same day.

This year is the first election in the newly redrawn House District 53. It used to be known as the “doughnut district” because it included everything around Bend, leaving a “hole” in the middle. Now, District 53, formerly held by Rep. Jack Zika, R-Redmond, stretches north of Bend, encompassing the northern parts of the city, most of Redmond and all of Sisters.

The 53rd District seat has been overwhelmingly Republican for decades, but the redrawn boundaries tilted it closer to Democrats.

Deschutes Count Clerk Steve Dennison estimates roughly 4,000 more ballots will be reported on Wednesday.

“We are still receiving ballots in the mail, and voters are coming in to resolve signature challenges,” Dennison said. “These all feed into the numbers we’ll be reporting over the next few weeks.”

Coming off of a three-day weekend due to Veterans Day, the clerk’s office said a brunt of the post-Election Day ballot-counting was set to take place Monday. The next release of results should be done by 5 p.m. Wednesday, but results won’t be official until the election is certified on Dec. 5.

This election’s reporting schedule is the same the county clerk’s office used for the May primary election, and it includes more frequent reports than elections past, said Dennison.

Ben Morris, spokesman for the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, said the office is more concerned with prioritizing accuracy rather than speed.

“In our experience, most election conspiracy theories are being driven by national politics, and I don’t think there’s anything inappropriate about releasing on a regular schedule,” Morris said.

He emphasized that no results are actually official until after Dec. 5.

The state’s new postmark rule, which was passed in 2021, allows ballots mailed on Election Day to count if they are received within seven days after Election Day.

“This improvement ensures that every vote cast on time gets counted,” the Secretary of State’s website reads. “It may also delay the results of close races because it will take a few days for all the votes to be counted.”

Official results take time, Morris said.