Elections officials said Wednesday there are still about 50,000 more ballots that need to be counted.
At the Kern County Elections Office Wednesday morning, signs of a long night were visible.
Final unofficial race results weren't posted until 4:27 a.m., ahead of only Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.
"You'll find us in the pony race on the state county reporting status. You know, we are the ones on the bottom all of the time because we are slugging away getting the ballots through," said Karen Rhea, Chief Deputy Registrar.
Rhea says part of the reason for the delay is the large voter turnout. More than 170,000 people in Kern County cast a ballot.
"I didn't expect for it to be this busy or anything like that, and this is my first time doing it," said Danyell Williams, a first-time voter.
In 2007, Secretary of State Debra Bowen limited electronic touch screen voting to just one machine per site, per precinct .
"Well, the electronic touch screens, we were originally, the system we purchased, was to have us use those as total use and the paper was for vote-by-mail. And, when the Secretary of State took the stance we could only have one per precinct that's when the shift towards more paper. But, our equipment isn't set up for that. We were designed for vote-by-mail," said Rhea.
That meant ballots in Kern County had to be brought back to the Elections Office and counted manually by ten borrowed counters, a long process officials anticipated.
And, there 's more work to be done.
Rhea says 14,800 provisional ballots and 32,000 absentee ballots are still being counted.
"We always learn from each one, but I think it went well," said Rhea.
An outcome the county has to be wrapped up and certified in 28 days, time local election officials say they'll likely need to get all of the votes counted.
Karen Rhea says the next revised set of unofficial voting results should be out Monday.
