What we will — and won’t — know on election night in California midterms

Your vote counts — but when and how is it counted?

California midterm election polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 8, and eligible voters have been casting ballots since October.

Election Day isn’t what it used to be with the wide use of vote-by-mail across the United States. You still have the option to physically go to the polls, but regardless of your method, your ballot is tallied and certified the same way.

Follow live Election Day updates at sacbee.com.

Election basics: The vocabulary

To understand the system, here are terms to familiarize yourself with:

Tabulate: To count systematically

Processing ballots: Typically involves verifying the voter’s signature

Vote counting: Recording votes manually or by a machine

Certify: To confirm or verify

Canvass: The official tally of votes

How to track your ballot

You can track your mail-in ballot with the state’s “Where’s my ballot?” tool. You must return your ballot via drop box or it must be postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. It must be received by the county no later than Nov. 15.

What will you know on election night in California?

You’ll see early, unofficial results on election night. We might have a sense of the winner of certain races that are not closely contested.

What won’t you know?

You won’t know official election results on election night. For those, we’ll all be waiting for the counties and Secretary of State to certify the count.

How does California count ballots?

Counties begin processing mail ballots seven business days before the election on Tuesday. This includes, according to the Secretary of State’s website, verifying signatures and removing ballots from envelopes.

Counties can process mail ballots up until Election Day, but they can’t be counted until after polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 8.

Once the polls close, officials and the Secretary of State immediately begin tallying early-returned mail ballots and ballots cast at voting centers. This process continues uninterrupted until every precinct or polling place is both counted and reported to the Secretary of State.

The official vote tally, which is open to the public, should begin no later than Thursday, Nov. 10. The count continues for at least six hours each day, excluding weekends and holidays, until completed.

Counties have 29 days after the election to send results to the state.

The Secretary of State then will receive a certified statement of results of the election by county officials.

By the 38th day after the election, the Secretary of State must determine the winners, certify the results and deliver certificates of election to the elected candidates.

Official results will be posted by Dec. 16 to the Secretary of State’s website.

When will we know final election results?

Residents will know some of the results of the California general election as early as Tuesday night.

After the polls close at 8 p.m., rolling results will be posted to the Secretary of State’s website and updated at 5 p.m. each day as counties count the ballots.

The official certified results of the election will be available to residents by Dec. 16 on the Secretary of State’s website. Meaning, it will take up to a little over a month to know the final results of the California 2022 general election.

County officials also release early, unofficial local results. In Sacramento, the first release of results will be shared about 8:15 p.m., Election Day, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said. But these will reflect early voting and not include in-person ballots received on the day of the election.

Updates on the results will be released two more times that night — at 10 p.m. and midnight. These votes, Haynes said, will include in-person ballots from Election Day.

“We will tabulate for probably a couple weeks after (Election Day), depending on how many drop box and mail-in ballots come in on Election Day and in the days to follow from the mail that people dropped in on Election Day,” Haynes said.

When does The Bee ‘call’ a race?

The Sacramento Bee relies on the Associated Press to call races at the state and national level, includes races in the Legislature. For local races, The Bee, like the AP, does not make projections or name likely winners.

Editors in the newsroom declare winners when the percentage of votes tallied and other factors — such as the historic average of votes cast and precinct-level voting data — indicate any trailing candidate couldn’t collect enough votes to bridge the leader’s margin.

As the AP puts it in its race-calling methodology, “Can the trailing candidates catch the leader? Only when the answer is an unquestionable ‘no’ is the race ready to be called.”

Race calls are not made as quickly as years past because of the change to vote by mail. This is because Election Day polling is no longer available, as voters mail in ballots; early indicators of votes aren’t always reliable as ballots are counted in a centralized location and take more time to process compared to ballots at a polling station.

This story was originally published November 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.