Thousands of Los Angeles County voters may not receive their mail-in ballots in time to actually mail them in.
Clerks are racing to process about 13,000 last-minute vote-by-mail applications while also handling 55,000 remaining voter registrations, Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan told the Los Angeles Times.
The 11th-hour backlog could lead to election day confusion, and officials are advising voters who are unsure of their registration or mail-in-ballot status to check the registrar's Web site: LAVote.net.
As early voters queued up in 90-minute-long lines Wednesday outside the registrar's Norwalk office, Logan told The Times he was confident that all mail-in ballots will be sent out by Friday -- the last day voters should mail back their completed ballots to ensure that they arrive on time.
After Friday, voters should not mail in their ballot, Logan said. Instead, they should hand-deliver it to the registrar's Norwalk office, 12400 Imperial Highway, or drop it off on election day at any polling place in the county. Any ballots received after 8 p.m. Tuesday will not be counted.
The deadline crunch comes as an unprecedented number of voters in Los Angeles County and California have applied to vote by mail. About 23 percent of the county's 4.3 million registered voters, or 977,000, requested mail ballots.
