Ballot counting underway at the Riverside County Registrar of Voters office

With just a handful of days left until election polls close in Riverside County, the ballot counting process began Wednesday at the Riverside County Registrar of Voters office.

As of Wednesday, 421,623 ballots have been returned out of the 1.2 million issued, according to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters office.

"We'll be working on getting all these ballots processed – so a lot of activity, a lot of work still to be done," said Riverside County Assistant Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco.

There are dozens of workers unsealing, separating, and flattening the ballots. The county has 10 high-powered, Dominion scanning machines that can process between 140-150 ballots per minute.

Now, the race is on to count them all in time to release preliminary results on Election Day.

"The results that we actually put out at 8:30 p.m. will include all the ballots that we've received up through Monday, Nov. 2," Tinoco said. "We're expecting about an 80 percent turnout for this upcoming election, hopefully more. We really want to see voters go out and vote."

Ballot processing is now a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week operation, with crews working through the night.

"Many folks think that Election Day is it – but we still have 30 days to go through our canvas period," Tinoco said.

It's possible the election won't be certified until Dec. 3. But with so many people voting early this year, the early results on election night could paint a clear picture of how the rest of the votes will fall.