California processed about 600,000 ballots since Thursday and has yet to process 3.9 million more in the November presidential election, including more than 610,000 in Los Angeles County, officials announced Friday.
In L.A. County, the preliminary estimate of outstanding ballots to be processed marked 610,800, which include 512,600 vote-by-mail ballots, 87,000 conditional voter registration ballots, 2,000 provisional and 9,200 that have write-ins, are damaged, need to be remade, or require further review. The total election results count is now 65.19% of eligible voters, according to county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan.
Most of those outstanding statewide — about 3.45 million — are vote-by-mail ballots, according to the state.
The county’s outstanding ballot tally has wavered, as ballots are still coming in. In fact, those postmarked by election day will be accepted until Nov. 20 statewide, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
“State law gives county elections officials up to 30 days after election day to complete vote counting, auditing and certification,” said Secretary of State Alex Padilla in a Thursday statement. “In California, we work to ensure every ballot is counted properly and every ballot is accounted for.”
This year, every registered voter was mailed a ballot due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite an unprecedented number of mail ballots, county election officials did not report backlogs and most polling centers saw shorter lines on election day as nearly 60% of voters, or more than 12.7 million, had already voted.
County elections officials have until Dec. 1 to report to the state final results for the presidential race and Dec. 4 for all other contests. By Dec. 11 the state must certify all results.
