As of Wednesday morning, King County Elections had received about 517,000 ballots for the Nov. 5, general election, with more than 100,000 arriving in Wednesday’s mail.
Ballots will continue to arrive; those with valid postmarks indicating that they were mailed on or before election day will be processed and added to the count, according to a King County Elections media release.
King County voters returned their ballots later in this election than they did in last year’s presidential election when most ballots had been returned by election day.
“We counted about 75 percent of the ballots that we had in as of yesterday,” said Sherril Huff, Director of Elections. “Due to the very large number of ballots that came in today’s mail, combined with a substantial number of drop box returns from last night, I have decided to extend the work schedule today to deliver two sets of results reports.”
The Elections Department will issue a first set of results at 4:30 p.m. as planned, along with a second set of results at 8:30 p.m.
King County expects to add an estimated 60,000 ballots to the combined counts Wednesday.
Each voter’s signature must be verified before a ballot is opened, inspected, scanned and ultimately tabulated. Ballots that are damaged, reflect write-in votes or were not voted consistent with the directions require additional handling and time to process. On average, a ballot takes more than a day to process so it can be added to the results report.
Subsequent results reports are scheduled for weekdays at 4:30 p.m. on most business days up until the election certification on Nov. 26.
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