The votes are all in for the California primary, but many remained uncounted Wednesday, leaving some contests still up in the air, notably the statewide question on whether to increase the tax on tobacco to fund cancer research. With more voters casting their ballots by mail, local election officials can’t process them all on Election Day, even one such as Tuesday that produced one of the lowest turnouts ever for a statewide primary. While tabulations show votes from all precincts across the state, many votes will remain uncounted for days or weeks afterward. No one had a precise estimate of the uncounted votes statewide, but it was at least 800,000 and perhaps a million or more as of Wednesday.
Los Angeles County reported it has 162,108 ballots left to count. Election officials in San Diego County said they had about 135,000; Orange County had about 113,000; Santa Clara County had as many as 96,000; Sacramento County 84,000; Alameda County 61,000; Riverside County 49,200; San Francisco County 31,000; San Bernardino County 30,000; San Joaquin County 18,000; and Santa Cruz County 16,000. The 11 counties reported a total of 800,000 uncounted ballots. There are 58 counties in the state.
Full Article: As Californians embrace vote-by-mail, number of unprocessed ballots swamp election offices.