The final count isn’t in yet for the Manteca City Council Area 2 seat but one thing is certain.

The winner will give the council its sixth female member since the city was incorporated in 1918.

As things stand now, the sixth woman will be Regina Lackey.

She had 41.83 percent of the vote as of Monday.

Judy Blumhorst was next at 37.40 percent and then Gabriel Galletta was next at 20.78 percent.

There are still outstanding votes to be counted.

And while Lackey appears to have a more than comfortable lead of 298 votes, both have refrained from calling the election.

They are mindful of six years ago when Mike Morowit had a solid lead after the initial counts only to lose to Jose Nuno three weeks later when the count was completed.

It’s not that Manteca has been reluctant to elect women.

There has been a dearth of women who have campaigned for council seats.

The first to win — Trena Kelley — did so in a big way.

She was the first directly elected mayor in city history prevailing in 1980 voting.

Since then when voting was still at-large citywide, Jeannie Dowhouser, Jeannie Keaster Denise Giordani and Debby Moorhead were all elected.

They were basically the only women – save two — who have ever even run for the council.

Moorhead, who lost her re-election bid in 2020, was one of the longest serving council members since the 1980s. She was on the council for 12 years.

The latest count reflects 54.3 percent of all 378,657 voters countywide who were eligible to vote, did so, and have had their ballots certified and counted.

There are still outstanding ballots to be counted that need to have signatures verified before they can be tallied.

Overall, there are  just under 173,000 other voters who could have voted.

There clearly aren’t that many ballots remaining as that would reflect a 100 percent turnout.

It is more likely the final turnout would be somewhere around 70 percent.

If that is in the ballpark, there would be around 60,000 ballots left to be processed.

Until the verification and count process is completed, there is no way of knowing what the final turnout will be.

Also, the remaining ballots are from throughout the county.

Manteca City Council Area 2 includes Woodward Park that is part of Manteca south and east of the 120 Bypass and Union Road as well as the city east of Highway 99 except for The Collective neighborhood.

Candidates, as well as registered voters that cast votes for them, must reside in Area 2.