What to Expect Election Night and Beyond
Election Night Procedures and Ballot Counting – After polls close at 8pm, results of the ballots received and counted will be released at the office and online at www.votescount.us. Election officials who have worked at the voting locations will bring their voted ballots from the voting locations to the County Government Center. Ballots will continue to be processed and counted until midnight.
1. 1st Report – will be released by soon after the polls close at 8pm and will include mailed ballots and in-person ballots that have been returned and processed prior to Election Day.
2. 2nd Report – around 10:30pm will include results from some in-person ballots returned from the voting locations and additional mailed ballots that have been processed and counted.
3. Final Semi-Official Report – will be released as soon as all voting locations have returned their in-person ballots and they are tallied. It will most likely be midnight or later.
Outstanding ballots - There will be thousands of outstanding ballots to be counted during the canvass: remaining mailed ballots returned by voters, same day voter registration ballots, provisional ballots, damaged ballots, ballots that need to be duplicated, etc. The semi-official results will be available in hardcopy at the office and online at www.votescount.us.
What’s the Canvass all about? - The Official Canvass will begin Wednesday, Nov. 4. The canvass includes processing all remaining ballots, adding same day voter registrations and processing their ballots, researching any provisional ballots, auditing the polls, and conducting a hand count of every contest at least once. For close contests, the hand count will be escalated. A random drawing of the precincts subject to the 1% manual tally will take place at 10am, Thursday, Nov. 5. Ballots will be coming in from the mail since the law has changed to allow ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3 to be considered received on time if we get them by Nov. 20. Also, any voter in the State of California can return their ballot to any drop box or voting location in the State of California, so those ballots will come in from other counties after Election Day.
We will do an update to the vote count each day and release the updated results around 4pm each day. We will also estimate each day how many ballots remain outstanding.
When will we be done? – We hope to have most of the ballots in and counted before the Thanksgiving holiday. Pursuant to Elections Code §15375, the elections official shall prepare a certified statement of the results for the presidential election within 28 days of the election which is Tuesday, December 1. We plan to certify all results for all contests by that date.
Watch what we do! – Observers are always welcome. We ask that you contact us and let us know when and where you would like to observe. We are also streaming our ballot processing live so you can watch from the comfort and safety of your home.