Ron Freitas  widened his lead over San Joaquin County incumbent district attorney Tori Verber Salazar in the latest June 7 election tally that is being slowed down due to a bar code snafu.

Freitas now has 22,881 votes (54.08 percent) compared to 19,427 (45.92 percent) for Verber Salazar.

Given there are only two candidates, whoever garners the most votes when the tally is over will be the next district attorney. There will be no runoff on Nov. 8. The next DA’s term starts in January,

 Troy Brown leads Brian Michael Biedermann in the county superintendent of schools race with 26,338 votes (67.46%) to 14,332 votes (35.24%).

Democrat Congressman Josh Harder — who moved from the 10th District to Tracy to run in the new 9th District — was leading eight candidates with 40.05 percent of the votes counted.  Republican Tom Patti who represents Manteca ninth of Yosemite Avenue, Lathrop and parts of Stockton on the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors was next at 26.89 percent.

Patti’s 11,835 votes so far are more than twice that of his nearest contender, Jim Shoemaker with 13.14 percent.

That means Patti is likely to go head-to-head with Harder on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The district represents all of San Joaquin County except Lathrop and the rural areas south of Manteca and east and south of Tracy.

Issues with a bar code misprint forced the verification and counting of ballots by hand.

As of Tuesday at 9 p.m., 54,468 ballots have been tabulated.

There are 53,994 unprocessed ballots including vote-by-mail ballots; provisional ballots; conditional voter registration provisional ballots; and unprocessed ballots that are damaged, need to be remade, or require further review.  All vote by mail ballots should have been received in the mail as June 14, which is the deadline to receive ballots postmarked by June 7.

Future ballot postings will occur every Tuesday by approximately 9 p.m. until all votes are tabulated before the statutory deadline of July 7.

Result totals will vary each week depending on scanning activities and ballots that need to be duplicated due to a ballot barcode printing issue.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com