Ross Mirkarimi was far ahead for sheriff and Sharmin Bock was trailing badly for district attorney.
But the actual winners may not be known for several days because of San Francisco’s special election system, which is little used elsewhere in the United States.
Here are the results with all 144.000 ballots counted:
Sheriff
Ross Mirkarimi 38.01%
Chris Cunnie 28.13%
Paul Miyamoto 27.27%
David Wong 6.51%
Write-in 0.08%
District Attorney
George Gascon 42.24%
David Onek 22.71%
Sharmin Bock 20.66%
Bill Fazio 10.63%
Vu Vyong Trinh 3.69%
Write-in 0.07%
A few years ago, San Francisco decided it did not want to have run-off elections and 
adopted a ranked ballot system. In this election, voters not only named their first choice for mayor, sheriff and district attorney; they also named their second and third choices.
Since no one received a majority, no one has yet been elected. In the coming days, vote counters will take the ballots cast for the last-placed candidate in each race and distribute those votes to their second choices. That will still leave no one with a majority, so they will next take the ballots of the next-to-last candidate and give those votes to the voter’s second choice. They will continue that process until someone receives a majority.
Since Mirkarimi and Gascon are well ahead in their races, the odds are high that they will win in the end—but that is no certainty.
Mirkarimi is running for an open position. The retiring sheriff has endorsed Mirkarimi, which boosted him tremendously. Mirkarimi has also been a member of the City Council for years and has high name recognition in the city.
In the district attorney race, Gascon is the incumbent appointed just months ago by the retiring mayor. That incumbency gave him the inside track. Bock—the only candidate who has actually been a prosecutor and tried cases—was neck-and-neck with David Onek, but both trailed Gascon badly. The other two candidates were mere also-rans.
Mayor, sheriff and DA are the only citywide administrative offices elected in San Francisco. Assuming Mirkarimi wins, he will then be the highest-ranking Iranian-American elected official in North America.
In another race the Iran Times has followed, Republican David Ramadan, a Lebanese-born Muslim, appears to have won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates despite some opposition based on his faith. But the results are very close and a recount is likely. Despite running in a Republican district, Ramadan leads by only 50 votes with 5,431 votes to 5,381 for his Democratic opponent.
