San Francisco Sun

The San Francisco Department of Elections announced it still needs to process and count approximately 157,000 ballots for the November 5, 2024, Consolidated General Election. The estimated total includes around 137,000 vote-by-mail ballots and 20,000 provisional ballots.

Director John Arntz stated that "estimates of remaining ballots to count will be posted daily at sfelections.org/results, along with all election results reports." Nearly all ballots received by November 3 have been counted. Most of the uncounted ballots were received on November 4 and Election Day from various sources including City Hall Voting Center, official ballot drop boxes, the United States Postal Service (USPS), and polling places.

Ballot processing will continue until 10 p.m. tonight and follow the same schedule on Thursday, November 7. The public can observe this process in person or via a livestream at sfelections.org/observe.

In addition to those already mentioned, the department will also need to handle any vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within one week after it. Since today's USPS delivery was not reviewed before issuing this notice, unprocessed ballot numbers do not include any validly postmarked ones received after Election Day.

The next preliminary results report is scheduled for release at 4 p.m. on Thursday, November 7. At that time, Director Arntz will be available for questions outside Room 48 in City Hall.

No results reports are expected today because processing of vote-by-mail ballots was paused on Monday afternoon to accommodate in-person voting at polling places. This allowed voters to cast regular rather than provisional ballots at polling locations. Processing will resume once polling place rosters are scanned and voting histories updated in voter records.