Democratic candidate Jim Clark is now leading by 284 votes in the race for Yuma County Superior Court Judge in Division Four, according to an update Monday evening from the Yuma County Elections office.

However, the Elections office has about 1,700 more provisional ballots left to count by Friday's deadline.

"In my experience, we haven't had a race like this in Yuma County in recent history," said Sue Reynolds, the Yuma County Elections officer.

Last Friday, Republican candidate Judge David Haws and Clark were separated by only a 10-vote margin.

The county mandates a recount only when there is a difference of ten votes or fewer.

This is the closest county race that Judge Haws remembers, and he said he is nervous, and he is waiting anxiously for the results.

With the results not final one week after the election, people may be wondering why there is a hold up.

"We had hoped that with using vote centers rather than precinct level voting for this election, that we would reduce the number of provisional ballots; however, we did not see that," Reynolds said.

The majority of the remaining uncounted provisional ballots are from people who requested early ballots but either lost them or did not return them on time, Reynolds said.

The County has until this Friday to have unofficial final results. If the difference is ten votes or fewer, then a recount will be mandatory.

"We cannot speculate, but we'll wait and see what the results bring in, and of course, once the unofficial results are released on Friday, then we'll know for certain what the next step will be in that race," Reynolds said.

At that point, about 40,000 ballots may be recounted, and the candidates could be waiting another two weeks for a decision.