By the end of election night, Sacramento County had tallied more than 140,000 votes. As of Thursday at 3:25 p.m., county data showed more than 258,000 ballots remain to be counted, which means it’s still far too early to call races separated by a hundred or even a few thousand votes.
“I can tell you from what I saw with my own eyes, we still have a lot of ballots to still get through and that doesn’t even count what’s going to come in the mail the next few days,” Sacramento County elections spokesperson Janna Haynes told CapRadio on Wednesday morning.
In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that requires county election officials to send every eligible voter in California a mail-in ballot. An estimated 91% of voters opted to mail in their ballots in the state’s June primary election, according to data from the California Secretary of State.
This process, however, slows the state’s ability to tabulate results, as mailed ballots take longer to arrive and process. State law requires counties to count all mail ballots that arrive up to seven days after the polls close, as long as those ballots are postmarked by election day.
“It does take a while to get through all of the conditional voter registrations that came in over the last 11 days, as well as anybody who submitted a vote by mail ballot that didn't have a signature or the signature didn't match,” Haynes said. “We'll take every moment that we need to in order to make sure everything is processed and accurate.”
Sacramento County will provide updated results on Fridays and Tuesdays until all ballots are counted.
The next update is expected by 4 p.m. on Friday.
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