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Shasta County was the last California county still counting precinct ballots Wednesday morning
Election night counting started late and ran past midnight
- Nov. 3Around 8:15 p.m., delays begin and staff find no results page is ready.
- Nov. 3Around 9:15 p.m., Curtis says first steps, including backups, hadn't been taken.
- Nov. 3At 10:17 p.m., the first preliminary results are published.
- Nov. 4After midnight, workers begin counting Election Day ballots.
Sources: Shasta Scout, KRCR, Action News Now
If you went to bed Tuesday without results, here's why. Shasta County was the only California county still counting precinct ballots Wednesday morning, according to Shasta Scout. Counting was supposed to start at 8 p.m., but it didn't begin until after midnight, Action News Now reports.
Registrar Clint Curtis acknowledged his team hadn't taken the first steps, including backing up results. KQMS Radio says he also had to run a “Zero Report” before workers could feed ballots into the counting machines. Then workers found that a batch of pre-Election Day mail-in ballots was mislabeled as Election Day votes. Fixing it took hours.
Curtis blames high turnout, ballots that were poorly prepped and staffing shortages. He emptied the full drop box outside Redding City Hall himself, more than once.
- Still to count: vote-by-mail and provisional ballots
- Curtis's last election: he leaves in early January
- His successor: Joanna Franscescut
Shasta has four drop boxes and days of counting left
- 4
- drop boxes countywide, down from 13 in 2025
- 3 to 4 days
- Curtis's estimate to count the remaining ballots
- Two-thirds
- of precinct votes counted by early Wednesday morning
Sources: Shasta Scout, KRCR, Action News Now
