Sacramento County to release next election results update Friday. Why does it take so long?
The earliest the answer to who will become Sacramento’s next mayor won’t be known until at least Friday, three days after the election. Residents might have to wait until next to find out who won as county elections officials provide updates ballot counting.
As of 2 a.m. Wednesday, 83,768 votes had been counted, but 200,000 votes were cast in the Sacramento mayoral race. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty grabbed the early lead with 55% of the vote against Flojaune Cofer with 45%.
Why does Sacramento County wait until Friday afternoon before it releases its next election vote update? County officials say the ballot-counting process takes time.
Kenneth Casparis, a county spokesman for the elections office, said they’ve released election results on the same schedule for the past five years. On election night, Sacramento County releases vote updates at least three times.
After vote centers close, the elections office reports election results every two hours until all ballots submitted in-person at vote centers on election day are counted, Casparis said. After that, he said the county is legally required to post election results once a week until the election is certified.
After election night, the county posts elections results twice a week — every Friday and Tuesday at 4 p.m. — until all the ballots are counted and the election is certified.
Throughout the process, ballots continue to be counted at the elections office. Casparis said posting elections results more frequently would slow the process and delay the ballot counting.
“It’s a long process,” Casparis told The Sacramento Bee on Thursday. “We wish we could release election results more often. It’s just not feasible.”
As of Thursday afternoon, a total of 360,050 election ballots in Sacramento County still need to be processed and counted, according to county data.
Out of those, 332,000 were mailed ballots received on or before election day, 12,000 were mailed ballots received after election day and 16,050 were conditional voter registration ballots.
Each time the elections office post results online, county officials have to make sure all challenged or contested ballots in that processed batch have been reviewed and verified by adjudication teams, Casparis said. Challenged ballots can be anything from a submitted ballot that can’t be read to one with a write-in candidate.
Those challenged ballots have to be tabulated and added to the total before the county can post an elections results update. Casparis said more frequent elections updates means the elections office would have to stop all ballot counting, usually a few hours, until the challenged ballots are reviewed and counted.
“It would just slow down the tabulation,” Casparis said.
The staff who work at the county’s Voter Registration and Elections headquarters are county employees or hired by the county through a contracted staffing agency.
The county spokesman said it’s difficult to say how many county employees are counting or reviewing ballots versus how many are contracted employees are handling those tasks, because these number changes day-to-day as needs shift in the elections office.
County volunteers, who are all compensated for their work time, handle duties at vote centers and transporting ballots, Casparis said.
This story was originally published November 7, 2024 at 2:02 PM.
