ONE THING / THE COUNT IS NOT FINISHED AT 8 P.M.

Night figures, then a canvass.

Not an official City of El Segundo page. This lesson does not post vote totals. Those stay on the Nov. 3 results page until the Registrar or the Secretary of State publishes them.

What election night includes

Elections Code section 353.5 says: The "semifinal official canvass" is the public process of collecting, processing, and tallying ballots and, for state or statewide elections, reporting results to the Secretary of State on election night. The semifinal official canvass may include some or all of the vote by mail and provisional vote totals. fact

Elections Code 353.5. Amended by Stats. 2007, chapter 508, effective January 1, 2008. Read November 3, 2026.

The Registrar's certifying page describes the same night in county words: Election Night counts include ballots cast at Vote Centers throughout the 10-day early voting period and Election Day as well as Vote by Mail ballots received and processed up until Monday before Election Day. fact

After Vote Centers close at 8 p.m. on Election Day, all voted ballots are sealed, secured and transported by sheriff's deputies to be centrally tabulated at the Ballot Processing Center: 13401 Crossroads Pkwy N, City of Industry, CA 91746.

Certifying Results (Canvass), Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. No publication date is shown. Read November 3, 2026. The page uses a curly apostrophe in "sheriff's"; this quote uses a straight one.

The official canvass

The same county page says: Counting votes does not end on Election Night. It says that after election night in a statewide election there are ballots still to count, including Vote by Mail ballots received on Election Day, provisional ballots, write-in ballots and damaged ballots. It calls the next stretch the 30-day period known as the Official Election Canvass. fact

It also says: California state law requires the RR/CC to complete and certify results within 30 days. The statute says: The elections official shall prepare a certified statement of the results of the election and submit it to the governing body within 30 days of the election, with a different deadline for some district elections in odd-numbered years. November 3, 2026 is not one of those odd-year dates. fact

Update times are not a fixed clock on that page. It says: After Election Night, the schedule of election results updates will be posted on the entrance door of the RR/CC headquarters and online. A schedule that is not posted is unavailable, not a promise of a quiet count. fact

Registrar certifying page, above. Elections Code 15372(a), amended by Stats. 2025, chapter 238, effective October 1, 2025. Read November 3, 2026.

The 1% manual tally

By law, a random sample of ballots from every election must be manually tallied to verify Election Night machine counts. A minimum of all votes cast in one percent (1%) of the precincts is included in this process, which is known as the 1% Manual Tally Audit.

The code's own opening is wider than that summary: During the official canvass of every election in which a voting system is used, the elections official shall conduct a public manual tally of the ballots tabulated by those devices, including vote by mail ballots, using either of the following methods. One method is a tally of ballots from the semifinal official canvass in 1 percent of precincts chosen at random. The other splits precinct ballots and vote-by-mail batches. The county page does not say which of the two methods it is using for November 3, 2026. fact

The code also says the manual tally shall be a public process and that the certification includes a report on the results of the 1 percent manual tally that identifies discrepancies and how each was resolved. fact

Elections Code 15360, amended by Stats. 2023, chapter 676, effective January 1, 2024. Registrar certifying page, above. Read November 3, 2026.

A risk-limiting audit is a different question

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission guide says: Post-election audits fall into two broad categories: traditional and risk-limiting. Traditional audits usually attempt to answer the question, "Did the vote tabulators function correctly?" Risk limiting audits attempt to answer the question, "Is the reported outcome correct?" fact

The same guide gives an example of a risk limit, not a California rule: A 5% risk limit means that when the audit stops, there is at most a 5% chance that a full recount would have arrived at a different outcome. fact

Whether Los Angeles County is running a risk-limiting audit for the November 3, 2026 election is not stated on the certifying page, which describes the 1% Manual Tally Audit. That answer is unavailable here. fact

U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Post-Election Tabulation Audit Guide (PDF in a November 2024 path). Read November 3, 2026. Straight quotation marks stand in for the guide's curly ones.

Next: five ways of adding ballots, with example data.

Drafted by Grok 4.7 on November 3, 2026.