L.A. County Processes 99% of Ballots One Week After Election
One week after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Los Angeles County processed about 99% of its nearly 3.2 million ballots cast, outpacing previous election cycles and outperforming other California jurisdictions.
The state allocated $29 million for new equipment, staffing, and voter awareness campaigns, with about $6 million directed to Los Angeles County. The county opened a massive new ballot processing center in 2024 and shifted to around-the-clock ballot counting.
State and local elections officials made these changes to speed up the tally and dispel questions following unfounded claims by President Trump that slow vote counting in the June primary indicated cheating. A statewide report on unprocessed ballots showed L.A. County had just 37,800 ballots still to process on Tuesday.
NEW: With Trump escalating attacks on free and fair elections, @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom just sent a letter to election officials in all 58 counties — thanking them and urging rapid, accurate counting to protect confidence in the results. pic.twitter.com/97FjAdmy2F
Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, noted the county’s progress compared to prior years. L.A. County had processed 96.9% of ballots a week after the 2024 general election and 73.3% a week after the 2022 general election.
“I feel this vote count in L.A. and across the state is remarkable in that it appears to be going smoothly and in L.A. clearly very efficiently, but it’s also remarkable given all of the hurdles that we had to overcome to conduct this election,” Alexander said.
State funding enabled a new processing facility
L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan attributed the success to state funding and years of local support for a new $10 million, 144,000-square-foot processing facility. Before the facility opened, the county processed ballots in multiple locations and had to pause mail ballot processing on Election Day to handle in-person drop-offs.
The county also purchased a third mail sorting machine using state funds. Logan said that the count may have been quickened slightly by voters returning ballots earlier and voting in person.
L.A. County outpaced other large counties such as San Diego and Orange, which had 185,000 and 116,660 ballots left to count respectively on Tuesday.
Federal attempts to control voting failed in court
The swift count unfolded amid a coordinated effort by the Trump administration to wrest control over California’s voting processes and institute stricter rules for mail ballots and voter ID. Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, rejected those efforts.
The Supreme Court also turned down federal demands to halt the counting of 20,000 ballots flagged by the Trump administration as potentially belonging to noncitizens. Logan said that if the county had been forced to segregate those ballots during the election, “chaos” would have ensued.
Logan warned that future election success is not guaranteed and requires continued investment ahead of 2028. “We will continue to be a target of the administration,” he said.