​79K Marin Votes Yet To Be Counted: Registrar

MARIN COUNTY, CA - Marin voters are eager to learn the results of Tuesday’s election, but it could take a while.

It could be another two weeks before most ballots are counted, county officials said Thursday in a news release.

More is expected to be known about the election results by the end of next week, the Marin County Elections Department said.

As of Thursday morning, approximately 78,000 mail-in ballots and an additional 1,000 provisional ballots remained uncounted, Registrar of Voters Lynda Roberts said.

The outstanding ballots came in on Election Day or the day after and require a multistep process before they can be counted, county officials said.

“I know people are anxious about the results,” Roberts said in a statement.

“The team is doing a great job sorting, verifying signatures, and removing ballots from envelopes. We will be working on Veterans Day and Saturday to ensure we’ll have many more ballots to count for Monday’s results update.”

Under California election law, ballots postmarked on or before Election Day can be received by the Elections Department and processed through Nov. 15.

Roberts said it is unknown how many more eligible ballots will be returned from the post office within the seven-day grace period.

Starting with the June election, the County implemented the Voter’s Choice Act that replaced one-day polling places with multiday vote centers. In addition, all registered voters were mailed a ballot 29 days prior to the election. This change expanded services and gave voters more options and flexibility.

“The change was confusing to voters in June and we enhanced our outreach efforts for November so voters would feel better prepared,” Roberts said. “We had far fewer calls from voters this time, so we believe the new efforts were effective and voters are getting used to the new vote center model.”

The Elections Department will continue outreach efforts before each election.

By law, the elections team has until December 8 to certify and report final election results to the Secretary of State. The election is to be ratified by the Marin County Board of Supervisors at its December 13 meeting. Additional information about election result reporting and processing vote-by-mail and provisional ballots can be found on the California Secretary of State’s website.

The ballot processing schedules are posted here.