1:00am | It appears that Steve Neal is now the unequivocal winner in the 9th District Council race.
  
Though the April 13 election results have yet to be declared official by the City Clerk, provisional ballots counted Monday now make it mathematically impossible for Neal to drop below the 50 percent threshold that would have triggered a June run-off with second-place vote-getter Val Lerch.
  
Before counting of the provisional ballots began on Monday morning, Lerch still had a statistical shot at triggering a run-off with Neal.
  
On Election Day, Neal won the race outright by garnering 52.20 percent of the district vote, breaking the 50 percent threshold required to be declared the victor.
  
However, there remained 114 provisional ballots still uncounted since the election.
  
According to numbers posted Monday evening by the City Clerk, Neal had garnered 69 of the provisional ballots, with 30 provisional ballots going to Lerch or one of the other two candidates in the race. This actually increased Neal’s percentage of votes garnered to 52.74. Thirteen of the remaining 15 provisional ballots joined 138 previously counted ballots that did not indicate a clear vote for anyone and two of the provisional ballots went into the column with five previous ballots that indicated more than one candidate.
  
Even if it could be determined by the Clerk’s office that all 151 of the total ballots that did not indicate any candidate went against Neal, he would still end up with 50.37 percent of the vote–just over the 50 percent threshold.
  
Given the turnout of the provisional ballots, it is unlikely that any attempt will be made to ascertain those remaining ballots with two candidates checked or with none checked.
  
The final tally, after the provisional ballots were counted, was: Steve Neal, 52.74 percent; Val Lerch, 26.53 percent; Brad Shore, 15.32 percent; and, Dan Pressburg, 5.42 percent.
  
The final tally in number of votes cast: Steve Neal, 1,694; Val Lerch, 852; Brad Shore, 492; and, Dan Pressburg, 174.