When will all the votes be counted for California primary election? When are results final?

Andy Alfaro/Sacramento Bee file

Local polling stations will open at 7 a.m. Tuesday for Election Day, which means scores of votes will need to be tallied.

Exactly how long will the ballot-counting process take in California?

The presidential primary election gives eligible voters a chance to choose from candidates for U.S. president, the Senate and and the House Representatives.

They can also weigh in on Proposition 1, which would authorize a $6.38 billion bond to build mental health treatment and housing facilities for those experiencing homelessness.

California has more than 22 million registered voters, the most of any state in the country, according to the California Secretary of State website.

Here’s how votes are counted and results finalized during an election in California.

How long does it take to count votes?

Vote-by-mail ballots are the first to be counted, according to the California Secretary of State.

County election officials start opening and processing vote-by-mail votes as early as 29 days before election day.

On election day, officials must report the first round of election results to the Secretary of State “no more than two hours after they begin tallying votes after the polls close,” the office’s website said.

The complete tally of votes is never fully finished on election night.

In fact, votes are not fully counted until after the canvass period.

What is the canvass period?

The canvass period is a 30-day time period used to count all ballots and conduct a post-election audit.

California county law grants election officials the time to “conduct a public 1% manual tally of the ballots tabulated by the county’s voting system,” according to the Secretary of State.

A manual tally requires county election officials to manually count 1% of the votes for precincts that are chosen at random.

This is done to verify the initial automated count, done by the electronic county’s voting system.

When are race results final?

County election officials will need to finalize election results 30 days after the election, which is once the canvass period is over.

The Secretary of State will then verify the results, which can take an additional 38 days after the election is over.

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