Why election results take time

• California law allows any ballot that is signed, dated, and postmarked on or before Election Day, and received by the elections ofifical by 5pm on the Friday after the election (which moves to Monday, November 14 due to the Veterans Day holiday), to be added to the vote count.
• Voters who fail to sign their vote-by-mail ballot envelope have up to 8 days after the election to either come in to sign their envelope or submit a statement providing their signature. 
• We have 10s of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots that were mailed or dropped off the days before and the day of the election. It takes time to process and count that many ballots. We spent two weeks preparing the 39,691 ballots. We will have that many or more to add to our count next week. We are working daily, including weekends, to get that work done. 
• We do a complete audit of the precincts and a manual recount of a percentage of the votes in every contest to ensure accuracy. 
• There are provisional ballots where a voter's eligibility to vote cannot be determined when they show up to vote. Those ballots take time to research after Election Day.We have more than 7,400 provisional ballots to review and count once voter eligiblity is established. 

Observers are always welcome. We are open 8am to 5pm Monday - Friday. We will also work weekends when the building is locked. There will be a sign posted on the door with a phone number so we can let you in.