BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — It's been one week since Election Day and several counties across California have been racing to tally their votes, amid a historical voter turnout across the country.
As of noontime on Tuesday, an estimated 15,504,166 votes have been counted in the state with about 2,097,466 ballots left to be counted, according to California Secretary of State spokesman Sam Mahood.
On Tuesday, the Kern County Election's Office confirmed more than 309,000 residents voted in the general election, which makes up nearly 73% of registered voters in the county.
So far, more than 166,000 ballots in the county have been counted -- 149,348 vote-by-mail ballots and 16,702 in-person ballots.
The county's Registrar of Voters Mary Bedard confirmed on Tuesday that there are still 143,393 votes that still need to be counted -- 117,016 vote-by-mail ballots and 26,377 provisional or conditional ballots.
"Last week was spent preparing the vote by mail ballots that came in at the polls for processing and signature checking them," Bedard said." "We then began the counting process on Friday."
There are 35 election workers putting in 14 hour days during the week and 12 hour days on the weekend, according to Bedard. They are "working on various aspects of the counting process. We have 10 tabulators," also, Bedard said.
The Elections Office is expecting to process about 20,000 ballots per update, which Bedard anticipates to be "at least three or four times a week."
All counties must report their final vote tally to the Secretary of State on December 1, for the presidential contest. All other state and federal contest votes must be submitted by December 4.
Then the Secretary of State Alex Padilla will certify all results on December 11.
