Shasta County is the only California county that has not yet completed the count of precinct ballots cast on Election Day. While dozens of counties across the state have already released their in‑person results, Shasta’s election staff are still processing those votes early this morning.

Legal deadline and current progress

State law requires county election officials to continue counting precinct ballots at the elections office until every vote cast in person on Election Day is tallied. Only after that can they pause, regroup, and begin counting mail‑in ballots and drop‑box submissions.

By early morning on Nov. 4, roughly two‑thirds of precinct votes had been counted, leading staff to estimate that the remaining work would be finished around 8 a.m.

Technical setbacks delayed the count

The first delay began at about 8:15 p.m. on Election Night when the polls closed at the Market Street elections office without a Shasta County Registrar on site. Staff discovered there was no public website landing page for the results, prompting a scramble for a fix.

Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis arrived from a nearby ballot‑drop‑box pickup effort and spent the next hour attempting to tabulate votes on the main computer frame. He later realized that preliminary steps needed to release results – such as backing up the data collected over the previous weeks – had not been completed.

At roughly 9:15 p.m., Curtis acknowledged that his team had failed to take those critical first steps, citing a staffing shortfall that left the computer unmanned. Earlier in the week, however, he had repeatedly told Shasta Scout that there was no staffing shortage.

Backup and system errors

Working with a representative from Hart InterCivic, the company that provides Shasta’s voting machines, Curtis backed up the system and performed the necessary preparatory actions. Preliminary vote counts were finally released around 10 p.m.

Election staffer Anna Rodriguez later explained that a separate mistake in the computer system had incorrectly tagged at least one set of votes as precinct votes during earlier processing. This error caused early results to appear as if precinct votes had already been counted, when they had not.

To correct the mistake, staff had to revert the system to a point before the error occurred, resave all results from that point, and then re‑run the tabulation a second time. The additional steps added several more hours to the process.

Counting resumes and expected finish time

At 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, election staff finally began processing the ballots cast at the polls on Election Day. They continued working through the early morning hours and were still counting precinct ballots at 7 a.m., with an expected completion time of around 8 a.m.

This story is developing, and updates will be provided as the count concludes.

Original reporting: Shasta Scout (Redding) — read the source article.