King County Elections will post two sets of general election results reports today and for the rest of this week due to the volume of last-minute voters returning ballots. The Elections Department will issue a first set of results by 4:30 p.m. as planned, along with a second set of results by 8 p.m.

King County Elections has received about 518,000 ballots to date for the general election, not counting a substantial number of drop box returns yesterday. Ballots will continue to arrive, however, they must have valid postmarks indicating that they were mailed on or before election day in order for them to be processed and counted.

Each voter’s signature must be verified before a ballot is opened, inspected, scanned, and ultimately tabulated.  Ballots that come in that are damaged, reflect write-in votes or were not voted consistent with the directions, require additional handling and time to process.  On average, a ballot takes a little more than a day to process so it can be added to the results report.

Subsequent results reports are scheduled for weekdays at 4:30 p.m. on most business days up until the election certification on November 25.