Over 40,000 votes still getting counted in Fresno County 1 week after election day
Nov 12, 2024
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - It's now officially over a week since Election Day and ballots in Fresno County are still getting counted.
Tuesday night, the Fresno County Election's office updated their vote totals on their website, adding 48,000 more votes.
Tuesday was the deadline for mail-in ballots, postmarked by Nov. 5, to make it to the county elections office. But even with these votes now in, election officials say it is not over yet, despite 271,000 ballots counted countywide.
"Our focus here is going to get the ballots in and counted," Fresno County Clerk James Kus said.
He said workers have been working around the clock since election day to get each and every vote counted.
"They're going to continue to run until it's done. And we've got 100-odd people working here, plus our downtown office doing same-day registrations and other processes. So a lot of efforts still going on here to make sure that we can get everything done by that Dec. 3 deadline," he said.
The Dec. 3 deadline marks when counties have to send presidential election results to the secretary of state, followed by the Dec. 5 deadline, which is the last day for county election officials to certify election results.
Kus said he knows many congressional and assembly races are still tight, and these ballots could decide who wins the race.
However, he said they're following all state laws and procedures.
Now that more ballots have been counted, he said they have a better idea of voter turnout this year compared to years past.
"Our in-person turnout was higher than we expected. Overall turnout looks like it's going to be a little less than what we saw in November of 2020, But we're still a little too soon to really say for certain where that's going to be yet. So big patterns that in-person turnout, it was really impressive," Kus said.
He also said it is expected that more votes will be added to the website on Friday.