Fresno County says thousands of ballots remain in primary count

Thousands of Fresno County ballots were still moving through the count Thursday, but the number that matters for the official canvass was 2,100 estimated ballots left to process, not the partisan tracker totals circulating online. County election officials said those ballots included 600 conditional voter registration and provisional ballots and 1,500 ballots requiring duplication, with another round of signature-cure ballots still able to arrive and be validated through June 24 at 5 p.m.

That official tally is the clearest answer for voters trying to separate campaign spin from what the Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters can verify. The County of Fresno said its next vote totals update was scheduled for June 15 before 5 p.m., and it continued to stress that election-night numbers are semifinal canvass results, not final official results.

The county’s earlier estimate shows how much work has already been absorbed since the June 2 Consolidated Statewide Primary Election. On June 4, Fresno County said 71,150 ballots still remained, including 70,000 vote-by-mail ballots received on Election Day from vote centers and drop boxes, 600 conditional voter registration and provisional ballots, and 550 ballots requiring duplication. The county also said vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by June 2 and received by June 9 were still eligible to be counted, though the final number of those late-arriving ballots was unknown.

The pace of counting is normal in California, where mailed ballots can still be accepted after Election Day if they meet legal deadlines and signatures are verified before tabulation. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently urged county elections officials to count every lawfully cast ballot as quickly as possible to reduce room for misinformation, while voter data firm Political Data Inc. said nearly 17% of registered California voters had cast ballots by Monday afternoon before the June 2 election. Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. said he expected turnout to rise above 2022 levels, potentially reaching 38% to 40% statewide compared with 33% in 2022.

California’s long count has become familiar to voters because mail voting is so widely used. CalMatters reported that 243,976 postmarked ballots were still uncounted at the end of election week in 2024, and that it took 38 days to count every vote in that cycle. In Fresno County, the practical question now is not whether the count is done, but which close contests can still move before the final canvass settles the primary.