With Election Day in the rearview, it’s still unclear who will be the next mayor of Los Angeles.
Both Karen Bass and Rick Caruso are currently embroiled in a race that is just too close to call, but votes are still being collected and counted.
But the latest vote totals won’t be made public for the next several days.
So what’s the holdup?
According to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office, the bulk of votes that have yet to be counted will need to undergo some further scrutiny.
They are vote-by-mail ballots that will require signature verification and other analysis before they can be counted.
There are also a high amount of ballots that were returned on Election Day through the mail, at official ballot drop boxes and at vote centers.
As of Wednesday night, Los Angeles County has more than one million ballots to count, although not all apply to the Los Angeles mayoral race.
- Vote by Mail ballots: 985,000
- Conditional Voter Registration ballots: 21,000
- Provisional ballots: 300
Typically, election officials will count mail-in ballots that were received on Election Day on the following day. Even still, more ballots can be expected to arrive in the next several days — any ballot that was postmarked on or before Election Day that arrive within seven days is eligible to be counted.
The law also requires that election officials conduct a “post-election canvass,” which includes a random audit of Election Day returns, as well as contacting voters to verify their signatures or those who forgot to sign their ballots.
Because all the ballots are being counted as they come in, the Registrar’s Office will be doing less-frequent updates to make sure each update provides substantial new information “leading to more definitive results trends.”
The next ballot count updates is expected to happen on Friday.
In the meantime, voters can visit lavote.gov for the latest information.
