Thread by @OCRegistrar

In the past week, about 10 reporters and several members of the public have asked: “Why are you still counting ballots this many days after Election Day?” or “Why is it taking you longer to count ballots this election?”

The simple answers are: This is normal in California, and it’s not taking longer this election.

California elections law prioritizes access, accuracy, and voter participation. That includes:

- mailing a ballot to all voters and giving them multiple ways to cast their ballot up until 8 p.m. on Election Day
- allowing the U.S. Postal Service seven days to deliver the ballots

- requiring other counties that receive an Orange County vote-by-mail ballot to forward it to us within eight days
- providing voters until 5 p.m. on December 1 to cure a potential signature challenge to their ballot

Every election in Orange County is unique in some way.

- In this 2024 Presidential General Election, we received the highest number of provisional ballots since we adopted the vote center model and started using electronic voter rosters on poll books.

- Voter turnout during the 2022 General Election was low, but voters cast the highest number of vote-by-mail ballots on Election Day in any election with more than 311,000.

- In the 2020 Presidential General Election during the COVID 19 pandemic, early voting and vote center voting accounted for nearly 87% of all ballots cast in that election.

- During the 2018 General Election when we used paper voter rosters and assigned voters to a specific polling place that was only open on Election Day, more than 117,000 provisional ballots were cast, accounting for 10.6% of all ballots cast.

But, whatever the specific challenge that arises in an election, the County of Orange Registrar of Voters team adjusts and performs at a high level.

In each of the above elections, we have signature verified almost all vote-by-mail ballots cast within seven to nine days of Election Day. In this election, we reached that benchmark within eight days.

Since that eighth day, we have been processing challenged vote-by-mail ballots, provisional ballots, and ballots that have to be remade because they were damaged or mismarked by the voter.

As of yesterday (November 23) at 5 p.m., we were still processing about 18,000 of these types of ballots. And of those 18,000 ballots, about 13,500 are waiting for the voters to cure a signature challenge to the ballots.

These numbers will update after 5 p.m. Monday (November 25) when we post updated results at ocvote.gov/results and ocvote.gov/results/whats-….

#OCVote #VoteEasyVoteSecure

You can view some of the TV news coverage we have received in the past week about the speed of the count at...

cbsnews.com/losangeles/vid…

foxla.com/news/orange-co…

foxnews.com/video/63649977…