COUPEVILLE — Another 3,000 ballots, at least, will be counted this afternoon in the next tally of votes for the 2011 General Election.

Many more ballots arrived for processing in Coupeville on Wednesday, via the mail and the drop boxes from Camano Island and north and south Whidbey, but Island County Deputy Auditor Michele Reagan said the entire batch of ballots won’t be verified in time for today’s count.

Reagan said about 5,000 ballots — that’s a very rough estimate — have come in since Election Day. So far, the signatures have been checked on 3,130 ballots.

Election workers are working their way through eight trays of envelopes; each tray contains about 400 ballots.

“They’re not going to get through them all today,” Reagan said.

A total of 3,579 ballots came in on Election Day, and all told, 22,721 ballots were counted on Election Night.

Today’s tally is not expected to change the likely winners on South Whidbey, though a relatively small number of votes currently separate the candidates in Langley’s two council races.

Front-runner R. Bruce Allen leads Thomas Gill by 18 votes in the race for Position 4 on the city council. Allen collected 52 percent of the vote in the first vote tally.

In the contest for Position 3 on the city council, Jim Sundberg leads Robin Adams by 28 votes. Sundberg picked up 67 percent of the vote.

Langley has roughly 815 registered voters, and 374 votes were cast in the Position 3 race. That’s a turnout of 45 percent in the race so far.

Countywide, the initial estimate of voter turnout was 48 percent on Election Night.