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Election Results Update
The Registrar of Voters posted the results from 995,366 ballots cast in the 2025 Statewide Special Election at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 12. The estimated 17,880 ballots still being processed when the last results report was posted were:
The remaining 200 Vote-By-Mail ballots were ballots damaged or mismarked by the voters that must be duplicated onto a new ballot. Voters notified that their Vote-By-Mail ballot envelope was missing a signature or that the signature on the envelope was significantly different than the signatures in their registration file will have until 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 30 to deliver a cure statement to the Registrar of Voters. Senate Bill 280 set this cure deadline and prohibited the Registrar of Voters from certifying Orange County’s election results before Tuesday, Dec. 2. For all provisional ballots, the Registrar of Voters team researches whether the voter is eligible to vote in Orange County and hasn’t already voted in this election anywhere in the state. All ballot processing except the provisional ballot research is observable by the public. Provisional ballot research is not observable to protect the voter's sensitive personal information. A daily calendar of canvass activities is posted on the Registrar of Voters’ website at ocvote.gov/observe. The unofficial results of the 2025 Statewide Special Election are updated at 5 p.m. on weekdays and can be found at ocvote.gov/results. After updated results are posted, a What’s Left to Process report is updated as well at ocvote.gov/left. Bob Page Registrar of Voters |
| Current Tweet As the County of Orange Registrar of Voters team this week finished signature verifying all of the Vote-By-Mail ballots cast in the 2025 Statewide Special Election and scanning those ballots we accepted for counting, |
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| Extracting and Preparing Ballots for Counting The Registrar of Voters handles every ballot with care to ensure accuracy and security of the 2025 Statewide Special Election. Before any Vote-By-Mail (VBM) ballot is opened, the signature on the envelope of every ballot is carefully verified. Only after this verification step has been completed can the ballot extraction process begin. During the extraction process, VBM ballots still enclosed in their envelopes are fed into specialized equipment or “extractors” that slice open the top and side of each envelope. An extraction team member pulls the ballot out of each envelope as it passes in front of them. Once separated from their envelope, ballots become anonymous as the ballots contain no personal voter information. Envelopes containing multiple ballots or damaged ballots are flagged by the staff member for further review by trained election staff. All ballots that are extracted remain grouped by precinct and move on to the next stage of processing. The members of our VBM Board then unfold, flatten and inspect the ballots for damage or marking by the voter in a way that would prevent the ballot from being scanned. They also check every opened envelope to ensure no ballot is left behind, preserving the integrity of every single vote. Damaged or mismarked ballots are provided to the ballot duplication team, which copies the vote on the damaged ballot onto a new official ballot. The duplication of the ballot is then reviewed by a second member of the team to ensure the vote was copied accurately. To learn more about ballot processing, review the Life of a Vote-By-Mail Ballot fact sheet on our website. Visit ocvote.gov/voting and then scroll down near the bottom of the page to click on the Life of a Vote-By-Mail Ballot “Learn More” button. |
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| Accurate Vote Counting The Registrar of Voters ballot scanning team carefully process ballots accepted for counting. The team feeds ballots in batches of 100 to 300 ballot sheets through our central ballot tabulators, also known as ballot scanners. If some of the ballots in a batch are rejected by the scanner, the team members will rescan the batch before saving it. They also may open the scanner to clean it before rescanning the batch. A color-coded cover sheet report is printed for every scanned and saved ballot batch to assist with our quality assurance checks. Each ballot batch is audited twice before the votes on the ballots are added to the tally. This ensures only verified, complete ballot batches are included in the official count. As with all components of the County’s voting system, ballot scanners are never connected to the internet. To protect the integrity of the process, data from scanned ballots is regularly backed up and each ballot batch is saved to a secure thumb drive, also known as a vDrive. The vDrives are then hand-delivered by a two-person team to the Tally Room. The tally team uploads the ballot data from the vDrives onto a voting system workstation in the secure and air-gapped Tally Room. Access to the Tally Room requires dual factor authentication and is limited to a small number of Registrar of Voters’ employees. After the voting system software tallies the votes from the vDrives, the results report must be downloaded to a different thumb drive and walked to an employee computer workstation outside the Tally Room to post the results on our website since the voting system workstations are not connected to the internet. The paper ballots are securely stored in the same batches they were scanned so we can find the precinct ballots included in the 1% Manual Tally audit. |
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| Auditing and Testing for Accuracy Before certifying Orange County’s results of the 2025 Statewide Special Election results on Dec. 2, the Registrar of Voters will audit the vote count and test voting system equipment and software to ensure the accuracy of the results. 1% Manual Tally One percent of all precincts in the county were randomly selected using 10-side dice on Nov. 6. A video of the random selection can be watched by visiting the Registrar of Voters website at ocvote.gov/observe. All ballots within the randomly selected precincts will be manually tallied by 15 four-person teams and compared to the voting system results. The hand counting of all ballots will start tomorrow (Nov. 14) at 10:15 a.m. We estimate these precincts contain a total of 11,000 ballots. Audit progress will be posted at ocvote.gov/audit. Logic & Accuracy Test Each of the about 200 ballot scanners used to tabulate ballots in this election will be tested. Test ballots are fed through each of the scanners to confirm they still count the votes accurately. This post-election Logic & Accuracy test will start tomorrow at 8 a.m. The Logic & Accuracy test was also completed before the scanners were used in the election. The public can observe the 1% Manual Tally audit and post-election Logic & Accuracy test by visiting our office at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Bldg. C, Santa Ana, or by viewing livestreamed video at ocvote.gov/observe. |
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| Use Your Voice for Voter’s Choice Today (Nov. 13) until 5 p.m. is Orange County voters’ last chance to provide input on how their elections are conducted for the next four years. On Thursday, Oct. 30, the Registrar of Voters posted an Amended Election Administration Plan (EAP) 2026-2029 for public review and comment at ocvote.gov/EAP – click on the Resources menu tab. The plan is informed by public comment and feedback gathered since June 2025 as well as federal and state law, election data collected since 2020, best practices in election administration, and the County budget. The areas covered in the EAP include:
The EAP addresses voter education and outreach, Vote Center and ballot drop box operations, accessibility and language services, election security, and contingency planning. The Amended EAP 2026-2029 is available in English and in translated versions in Chinese, Farsi (Persian), Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, in accordance with federal and state law. Comments on the EAP may be submitted today by:
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