Remember being a kid? You couldn’t wait for your birthday so you could open your presents.
Or for summer, so you could go swimming. And the list goes on. We’re all grown up now and waiting isn’t any easier in this age of instant gratification. Want to know something? Google it! Want to buy something? Charge it!
Okay, so the point is the election results will be in when they get in and not a second before. Sounds like something Mom would say.
We all want to know who won what race and which proposition passed; and as soon as possible. But this Presidential General Election, results may take a little longer to come in and here’s why.
- More people vote during a presidential election. Registrar of Voters Deborah Seiler expects a high turnout; 75 to 80 percent.
- More registered voters, San Diego County now boasts nearly 1.6 million registered voters, the highest ever.
- More precincts will be open than in the June Primary Election, from 1,432 to 1,527.
- More mail ballots than ever before were issued by the Registrar’s office, up to 850,000.
- In short, we have more voters, more polling places, more mail ballots. Provisional ballots always take longer. Registrar workers must make sure your votes count for the contests you were entitled to vote on and that they don’t count for the ones you weren’t.
Those mail ballots? More convenient for us, but if you drop them off at the polls on Election Day; the Registrar of Voters can’t start counting them until Thursday at the earliest because all the signatures need to be verified first. The Registrar expects 100,000 to 150,000 ballots will be dropped off Nov. 6.
“This is not really a new phenomenon,” said Seiler. “We’re just very likely to have a higher volume of outstanding ballots.”
So what can you expect?
The polls close at 8 p.m. Within minutes, the results should come through for the ballots that were mailed in or submitted during early voting at the Registrar’s office. Those numbers will probably account for 25 to 30 percent of the total vote count for the election, up to 400,000 ballots.
After that, some precinct results may trickle in, but only a very light number.
Close to 11 p.m. you can expect the bulk of the precinct numbers. After that, results should come in periodically as trucks with ballot boxes continue to roll in.
Past midnight and you might be ready for bed, but all the precinct ballots might not arrive until after 2 a.m. After all the precinct ballots are counted on Election Night, Seiler expects only about 80 percent of the vote. Those tight races might still be up in the air.
“It’s not over on Election night and it hasn’t been for a long, long time since the increase in mail ballot voting,” said Seiler. “Close contests are not decided until all the ballots are in the count.”
While you can guess how some races will turn out due to the early numbers, the results for the tight races must wait until election workers process, review or inspect every ballot; precinct, provisional, mail-in and damaged.
“Between mail ballots and provisional ballots, a close count always comes to the very end,” said Seiler. “We must do our due diligence to make sure everything is right.”
Despite any nail-biting on our parts, some races may not be decided for several weeks. The results must be certified, however, 28 days after Election Day on Dec. 4.
You’ve heard it said before; every vote counts. And the Registrar’s office is making sure that every vote does count.
So no matter how much we worry and wait, that’s really what matters, right? Every vote counts.
