On Election Night, the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters releases unofficial results of voted ballots received from polling places throughout the County and voted mail ballots received prior to Election Day.

These results are cumulative and updates are released throughout the night.  The first results posting takes place at approximately 8:30 p.m. after the polls are closed. The polls are considered closed once all voters in line at 8 p.m. have completed voting. This posting includes results for the vast majority of mail ballots received from the U.S. Post Office on or before Election Day and mail ballot drop-off locations prior to Election Day.

Results for ballots cast at polling places on Election Day are added every two hours, thereafter. Ballot counting continues on Election Night until all regular ballots cast at polling places have been counted.  Though ballot counting may be completed for the night, the Registrar of Voters will continue to process and count additional ballots in the weeks following the election.  The estimated number of ballots remaining to be processed is provided to the public shortly after the final posting of the unofficial Election Night results and with each subsequent posting of results until the Final Certified Election Results are posted.

The ballots remaining to be processed include damaged ballots, ballots needing adjudication, mail ballots received on Election Day, mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within three business days following Election Day, mail ballots that require further signature review, provisional ballots, and conditional voter registration provisional ballots.

On Election Night, the public often wants to know how the counting of ballots is progressing and when the counting will be completed.  On the Election Results page, there are some statistics that provide the public with a very rough estimate of how ballot counting is progressing.

Underneath the title of a contest and above the list of candidates in each contest, you will find the number of Precincts Reported out of the total number of precincts, followed by a percentage, as shown below:

State Senator District 23
Precincts Reported: 60 / 240    (25%)

These numbers represent the number of precincts reporting results (60), the total number of precincts located in the jurisdiction of the particular contest (240), and the percentage of precincts reporting results (25%).

As the vote count is updated throughout Election Night, the number of precincts reporting and the percentage of precincts reporting will increase, as shown below:

State Senator District 23
Precincts Reported: 120 / 240    (50%)

When all polling place ballots from all precincts in the jurisdiction are counted, with the exception of damaged ballots and ballots requiring adjudication, the numbers will read as shown below:

State Senator District 23
Precincts Reported: 240 / 240    (100%)

The precincts reporting number only provides a very rough estimate of the progress of counting of total ballots for a couple of reasons.

First, it reports on ballots cast at polling places on Election Day as well as ballots cast in designated mail ballot precincts prior to and on Election Day.  However, it does not take into account any mail ballots cast in precincts with a polling place assignment.

Second, it is simply a snapshot of how many precincts have had their Election Day ballots run through the ballot scanners.  It does not take into account the number of ballots in a precinct.  Some precincts have hundreds of ballots and other precincts have no ballots at all!  So, there is not always a direct correlation between the number of precincts reporting and the number of ballots counted.

In the above examples, there were 250 mail ballot votes counted prior to Election Day.

In the first report that includes polling place results, 1,000 polling place votes were counted in the first 25 percent of precincts reporting.

In the next 25% of precincts reporting, 1,000 polling place votes were added to the results for a total of 2,000 polling place votes.

You might expect to find an additional 2,000 polling place votes in the last 50 percent of precincts reporting, but only an additional 500 polling place votes were counted for a total of 2,500 polling place votes.

The reason is there are many precincts that have zero voters.  In our software program, precincts with zero voters aren’t reported until all other precincts have reported their results.  So, in the final update on Election Night, the percentage of precincts reporting will suddenly rise to 100 percent but there may not be a drastic change in the vote count.

For this election, there are 146 precincts.  Of those precincts, some have very few registered voters residing in them.  In fact, 45 precincts of this election’s 146 precincts have no registered voters in them at all.