Vote counting continues in Southern California following Tuesday primary

Tuesday's primary voting is over, but the counting continues as there are still 165,00 ballots that haven't been processed in Los Angeles County as of Thursday , according to the Secretary of State's Office.

As for other counties across Southern California, "Orange County has let us know that they still have about 92,000 ballots left to count," says spokeswoman Shannan Velayas. "San Bernardino, we haven't heard yet from them. Riverside County still has about 40,000 ballots that they have left to count."

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Velayas says voter turnout Tuesday was disappointing, despite extensive efforts to encourage voters to cast ballots. Preliminary figures show an 18.4 percent turnout.

She says the last time a non-presidential primary voter turnout was this low was in June 2008. Twenty-eight percent of eligible voters cast ballots. 

It's also still not clear who will advance to a runoff election for state controller in November. 

Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, a Republican, is leading with 24 percent of the ballots cast.

Velayas says there are still about 1 million votes to count as of Thursday.

"The Controller's race is very close," Velayas said. "You see that three of the candidates are just neck-and-neck [with] each other."

And those three candidates include: Former Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez, Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and Republican businessman David Evans. They each have 21 percent of votes. 

Whoever wins in the November election will replace incumbent Democrat John Chiang, who is termed out.