It’s been two weeks since California counties started counting ballots on Election Day, and an estimated 620,000 votes remain to be processed.
A handful of counties still have large batches of votes that they have not reported to the California Secretary of State, including Lake, Mendocino, Nevada and San Luis Obispo counties.
In the Bay Area, Alameda County was among the counties that had a slow start, but as of the Nov. 19 morning update, Alameda county has now processed 97.4% of ballots cast in that county. All Bay Area counties have now processed more than the 96.1% of ballots processed statewide as of Tuesday.
Overall, as the final ballots are processed and verified, turnout in California appears to have been notably lower than the 2020 election. The estimated 16.1 million voters represent about 71.3% of all registered voters, according to the Secretary of State’s 15-day Report of Registration, and 59.9% of all eligible voters. Both of those figures are notably lower than they were in 2020, and the lowest percentage of registered voters to turn out since the 2000 election.
As the final numbers emerge, there were over 1.5 million fewer votes cast this year than in the previous election, despite more registered voters and more eligible voters.
