California Reports 5 Million Ballots Still Need Counting
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California counties report nearly 5 million ballots remain uncounted in an election that could see turnout near that achieved in 2008.
The Secretary of State's office said Thursday that about 4.4 million ballots are waiting to be processed.
The figure includes more than 3.1 million vote-by-mail ballots and a million provisional ballots. And the number may increase as counties are still receiving ballots that were postmarked by Election Day.
The statewide update doesn't include populous San Diego County, which separately reports having 595,000 unprocessed ballots.
The other counties not included in the statewide report are Imperial and Modoc counties.
Los Angeles County, the state's most populous, has more than 1 million ballots waiting to be processed.
A record 19.4 million people were registered to vote in the Nov. 8 general election — about 78 percent of those eligible. That's the highest percentage of eligible citizens registered before a general election in 20 years, the secretary of state's office said in a statement.
More than 10 million ballots have been counted. Adding another 5 million potentially valid ballots, the turnout could top 77 percent of registered voters. That's close to the 79.42 turnout for the 2008 presidential election when President Barack Obama was first elected to the White House.
Turnout in 2012's general election was 72.36 percent.
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