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Los Angeles, CA (KABC) — For the very first time in California, every registered voter received a mail-in ballot – but counting all of them will continue to take more time.
The Los Angeles County Registrar sent 5.7 million vote-by-mail ballots to voters and about 75% of the ballots cast were vote-by-mail.
“When you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of ballots, that just takes time and resources to get done,” said Registrar Dean Logan.
As of Friday, there were still an estimated 610,800 outstanding ballots left to be counted.
“California has always had a lengthy post-election canvass period, and our election laws are written to ensure that every valid vote can count in the election,” Logan said.
To reassure voters, Logan pointed to the ways California ensures transparency in the process.
“All of our processes are open to public observation, and even with the pandemic conditions, we run livestreams on our website, a video of the processing the vote-by-mail ballots,” Logan said.
Still, some have expressed concerns about possible voter fraud or other irregularities.
Logan said that definitive results in California could take around three weeks.
Some ballots are still arriving by mail.
For the 2020 election, the ballot delivery deadline was extended from three days to 17 days.
That means as long as ballots were postmarked on or before Election Day, they can be counted if they are received by Nov. 20. This also means that seeing the final results in close races could take a while.
The next canvass update from Los Angeles County is expected on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
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