By Petaluma Voice

Initial election results in Sonoma County will be published online soon after 8 p.m. Tuesday night, and every two hours after that until all 32 vote centers have been recorded, said Evelyn Mendez, Sonoma County registrar of voters, when reached by phone Monday afternoon.

Mendez said her office hopes to finish up around 2 a.m. on Nov. 4 with the initial vote center tally, she said.

Petaluma Voice will be posting and updating results on local races throughout the evening.

The county will publish its next count on Thursday, Nov. 5, and subsequent updates will be posted online to the Registrar of Voters Office website on Monday, Nov. 9; Wednesday, Nov. 11; and Friday, Nov. 13, at about 3 p.m. as staffers tabulate additional mail-in and conditional votes, she said.

As of Monday, more than 114,000 residents have already voted in this election, Mendez said. At the close of the Oct. 19 registration deadline, the office had recorded 320,724 registered voters.

Conditional voters who registered later than the Oct. 19 deadline received conditional ballots that will be counted after Election Day. This form of registration is considered a safety net for those who miss the deadline to register or update their registration information, according to the California Secretary of State’s website.

To conditionally register, voters should visit the county elections office (3880 Brickway Blvd., Santa Rosa) or a vote center (see below for Petaluma locations).

In the weeks leading up to the election, there have been growing concerns of federal election interference nationwide, coupled with a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in California.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to prosecute and jail election officials in all 50 states if they didn’t separate ballots that the federal government alleges came from non-citizens. On late Friday, a federal judge ordered a temporary restraining order to stop the justice department from threatening election workers for their role in processing ballots. 

“There’s always concern when there’s threats,” Mendez said. “We have to make sure our workers are safe, voters are safe, and everybody is safe.” She added that every vote center has protocols in place to respond in the event ICE agents are in the area.

All vote centers have a direct hotline to the Registrar of Voters Office, and Sheriff’s Office deputies will be on site at the registrar’s main office in Santa Rosa, she said.

For those who are registered and did not receive their ballot, Mendez encourages them to “go to a vote center or our office.”

For now, her team is “trying to make sure the voters have an opportunity to vote,” she said. After the election, her office will work to figure out why some mail-in voters did not receive their ballot.

“We don’t have any idea,” she said. “The post office can’t answer it, the vendor can’t answer it, we don’t know. Everybody’s situation is different.”