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LA County vote count now complete, turnout down at 69 percent
Voters take part in early ballot casting at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk in Norwalk on Wednesday morning, Nov. 2, 2016. The county on Friday announced it had completed its vote count.
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LA County vote count now complete, turnout down at 69 percent
Los Angeles County's vote results are in and they show turnout declined from 2012, falling from 71 percent to 69 percent of registered voters in a contentious presidential election year.
In all, 3,544,115 county ballots were processed and counted.
The county finished its vote count Friday afternoon, a few days ahead of the Secretary of State's Tuesday deadline for counties to submit their certified results in the presidential election.
More than 20 counties across the state are still counting votes, according to the latest information from the Secretary of State's website.
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The vote count for L.A. County, with 5.1 million registered voters as of the Nov. 8 election, has historically been lumbering. But California's election laws — which now allow for submission of mail ballots as late as three business days after the general election plus manual checks to determine a voter's intent when casting provisional ballots — make for one of the slowest vote counts in the country.
Turnout was down significantly from back in 2008 when President Barack Obama first won the White House: it was 82 percent back then.
This year's general election results show that 72 percent of county voters backed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton compared to nearly 23 percent of voters who backed President-elect Donald Trump.
The Los Angeles County's results are expected to further boost Clinton's lead in the popular vote, which stood at more than 2.5 million on Friday, according to data collected by The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan website.
County officials must report their final presidential results to the Secretary of State's office by Tuesday and all other state contests by Dec. 9. The Secretary of State then has until Dec. 16 to certify all election results.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that voter turnout was based on eligible voters. In fact, the county clarified its information to say that turnout is based on registered voters.
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