Updated vote totals in Ventura County on Wednesday expanded Republican Tony Strickland's lead to 1,560 votes over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in a cliffhanger race for the 19th District state Senate seat.

After election night, Jackson was ahead by a mere 108 votes. Since then, the lead has see-sawed between the two candidates as late-arriving absentee votes and provisional ballots are tallied by election workers in three counties.

The 19th District includes most of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and the northwestern corner of Los Angeles County.

Election officials said they may be busy for weeks more counting remaining ballots and then doing a “manual tally” to ensure the accuracy of the results. Because the race is so close, the state probably will require that all 19th District ballots be manually recounted to ensure the accuracy of the results, an election official said Wednesday.

Jackson benefited slightly from a new batch of absentee votes reported by Santa Barbara County late in the afternoon, but those weren't enough to erase Strickland's lead. It had swelled to 1,672 votes earlier in the day with new totals from Ventura County, where tens of thousands of absentee ballots and 14,345 provisional ballots remain to be counted.

The only votes still uncounted in Santa Barbara County, election officials said, were about 6,000 provisional ballots and 1,100 “emergency ballots” issued during the final week to voters who couldn't make it to the polls but hadn't signed up as absentee voters.

Provisional ballots are cast when a voter's registration is uncertain, but those ballots must be verified before they are counted.

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Ventura County election workers on Wednesday did not have an exact number for the remaining absentee ballots there.

With nearly 374,000 votes counted so far throughout the 19th District, Strickland had received about 50.2 percent and Jackson had 49.8 percent.

A new regulation by the California Secretary of State's office requires a “manual tally” in any races where election night results show the top two candidates within one-half percent of each other.

Elections officials initially thought that meant 10 percent of the precincts would have to be recounted manually. However, it now appears a full recount of 19th District ballots will be required because the race is so very close, said Santa Barbara County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor Joe Holland.

“It appears we will have to re-tally the entire 19th District state Senate ballots because the margin was so slim on election night,” he said. “This is a brand new regulation. It's the first time this has ever happened,” where a race covering multiple counties had to be fully recounted because of the new requirement, he added.

The manual tally “potentially could take weeks,” Holland said. “It could lead right up to Thanksgiving.”

He had no estimate of what it will cost.

The battle between Jackson, of Santa Barbara, and Strickland, of Moorpark, has been one of the most closely watched and expensive legislative races in California this year.