Humboldt County still counting 21,151 ballots after June 2 primary

Humboldt County elections workers were still sorting through a large stack of June 2 primary ballots Thursday, with 21,151 left unprocessed and only 19,370 already counted. The count was never finished on election night, and the latest update showed how much of the county’s result was still waiting in sealed envelopes, provisional packets and ballots cast at voting locations.

The county said 20,823 of the ballots still to be processed were vote-by-mail ballots, along with 286 provisional ballots and 42 ballots from voting locations. That means the figures voters saw after polls closed at 8 p.m. on June 2 were only an early snapshot, not the final word on the election in Eureka, the North Coast and the rest of Humboldt County.

Under California rules, county elections offices have a 30-day official canvass period to verify eligibility, compare mail-ballot signatures, count provisional and conditionally registered voters’ ballots, and complete the required one-percent manual tally. Humboldt County said its canvass began Thursday, June 4, and the office plans to post updates around 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays until the election is certified.

The state also allows valid vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive within seven days. For this primary, that means ballots postmarked by Tuesday, June 2, and received by Tuesday, June 9, can still be added to the total. State guidance also said polls were open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on June 2, and that the last day to vote in person or return a ballot was Election Day itself.

Humboldt County said 84,944 registered voters were mailed ballots for the primary, underscoring the scale of the canvass still ahead. The slow pace matters in a county where a few hundred ballots can matter in a close race, and where residents have been watching ballot handling closely after staff discovered 596 uncounted sealed ballots from the November 4, 2025 statewide special election inside a locked drop box.

The county later said those ballots had remained sealed and were not tampered with, and the Humboldt County Superior Court granted the county’s petition to count them. In response, the county adopted a new physical verification step requiring each drop box to be checked empty and secured before results are finalized. That recent mistake has made the current canvass a test of both election capacity and public trust, and the final totals will continue to move as more ballots are verified through June 9 and beyond.