LA County Registrar of Voters says so far, voter turnout is trending higher than 2022 CA gubernatorial election turnout

By Tuesday afternoon, voter turnout in Los Angeles County was slightly ahead of that in the 2022 California gubernatorial election, officials said.

Dean Logan, The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, gave an afternoon Election Day update and said just before 2 p.m., more than 100,000 voters turned up to vote in person, and nearly 1 million vote-by-mail ballots had been returned through various methods.

He said so far on Tuesday, everything has opened on time, there have been no significant incidents, and things have been going steadily all day.

Logan compared turnout so far this year to that of the June 2022 gubernatorial election. "We are trending about 2 to 3 percentage points ahead of where we were at that same election four years ago."

He said the June primaries have notoriously lower voter turnout than other statewide elections and than general elections.

"But this one is trending above that norm, and I think that based on what we are seeing out at the vote centers today, and what we expect to see from a lot of vote-by-mail ballots coming back today  … that we probably will land somewhere in the mid 30 percentile range of turnout for this election, and that compares to about 28 percent from four years ago," Logan said.

All LA County voted ballots make their way back to the Ballot Processing Facility in the City of Industry, where it's "designed for transparency."

Logan said the tally room, where vote counting takes place, is enclosed in glass, and there is an observer loop around it, so anyone can watch. "We livestream our operations, so tonight as we're processing and counting ballots, people can, from their personal device or home computer, can see what's going on here," he said.

After the polls close, around 8:15 p.m., the first results of the election will be released. Logan said it will be a "healthy" representation of the entire county, as it accounts for a large share of the votes cast.

"Those results will represent vote-by-mail ballots that have been returned through the mail, through today's mail, even the mail we received today will be included in those vote totals," Logan said. "Ballots returned to drop boxes, through yesterday, and mail ballots that were dropped off at vote centers through Sunday."

As ballots steadily begin to make their way to the processing center, a little before 10 p.m., further updates within 30-to-45-minute cycles will continue through the night.

Then updates will continue daily, beginning Wednesday, through the weekend and into next week.