Voting in Merced County? Here’s what we will know — and won’t know — on election night
California voters have until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 5, to cast their votes in the 2024 general election.
The Merced County elections office has already begun counting ballots ahead of Election Day.
How soon after Election Day will voters know who won local races and which measures passed?
The Merced Sun-Star turned to Merced County’s top elections official to find out when election results will be available to the public.
Here’s a look at what we’ll know and when:
How many ballots has Merced County counted so far?
The Merced County Registrar of Voters had counted more than 16,000 ballots for the 2024 presidential election as of Oct. 25, the Sun-Star previously reported.
The county began processing vote-by-mail ballots on Oct. 9, according to Melvin Levey, Merced County registrar of voters.
When do polls close in Merced County?
Vote centers in Merced County will be open until 8 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5.
You can vote in person or take your mail-in ballot to any polling place, drop-off location or designated drop box in the state before 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Mailed ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by a county elections office no later than seven days after Election Day — Tuesday, Nov. 12, according to The Bee’s voter guide.
How are ballots counted in Merced County?
Merced County elections workers collect ballots from 20 ballot drop boxes across the county as well as the U.S. Post Office, according to previous Sun-Star coverage.
Those ballots are taken to the elections facility on East 15th Street.
There, workers take a raw count of the number of ballots and where those ballots were collected. The ballots then go on to a process of signature verification, according to Levey.
The machine reads the ovals that are filled in on the ballots, and the votes are then tabulated.
When will we start seeing election results?
Merced County will post its first batch of election results by about 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 5, the Merced Sun-Star previously reported. This will consist of vote-by-mail ballots received prior to Tuesday.
The county will then post two additional updates on election night, including an update about 10 p.m. that will include ballots cast in person prior to Election Day.
The final update on election night, which will come closer to midnight, will include
voting results from in-person voting on Election Day.
“After that, then the next result reporting after election night will be the following Friday,” Nov. 8, Levey said. “From there, we will go once a week, generally on Thursdays, unless we have a lot of additional results to report in between.”
Members of the public can go to the county’s elections website, MercedElections.org, to find the latest election results.
How long will it take to count every vote?
According to Levey, voters have until Sunday, Dec. 1, to “cure” or correct their vote-by-mail ballots.
This may be needed if the voter forgot to sign their ballot, the signature doesn’t match the voter rolls or it isn’t clear enough.
“On Dec. 3, we’ll send our official results up to the California Secretary of State, and that will be the end of the official process,” Levey previously told the Sun-Star.