SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif — Oct. 19 is the final day for Californians to register to vote, and around 150,000 Sacramento residents have already sent back their ballot.
It's a staggering statistic when you consider that, 14 days before election day in 2018, Sacramento County election officials said they only had around 57,000 back.
They also said that the amount of ballots returned continues to increase day by day.
"California as a whole is seeing a surge in early voting returns," said Janna Haynes, Sacramento County Public Information Officer.
So if our elections office is seeing a record-breaking amount of ballots returned, does that mean we'll have a better understanding of results on election night? In short, not necessarily.
"I think election night is going to be really unnerving for a lot of people as we see polls close on the east coast and results come in while they're tabulated slower locally," said Haynes. "I would caution anyone to really temper their expectation about what those election night results are."
There are around 875,000 registered voters in Sacramento County.
While record breaking, less than 20% of voters have already cast their ballot, and election officials have no way of knowing how many of those registered will actually choose to vote.
RELATED: 'The important thing is to be a voter' | Why it's OK if some ballot questions get left blank
"That's really the wildcard," said Haynes. "How many we've gotten back doesn't necessarily help us predict how many total we will have."
A secured computer tabulates all of the early ballots that come in before election day and released those results at 8 p.m. on election night.
"Then after 8 p.m., it's going to be those election day in-person voting that happens that come back through the night," said Courtney Bailey-Kanelos, Sacramento County Registrar of Voters.
The in-person results will be released in two-hour increments throughout the night. After that, election officials release results every Tuesday and Friday at 4 p.m.
Because voters have until election day to get their ballot postmarked in the mail or in a drop-box by 8PM, that can delay the final results.
Haynes said the first wave of results will be nowhere near final.
While we may get an idea of national results from east coast states because polls close earlier, local measures could be the results that people wait for the longest.
"We really caution local candidates and local measures not to count their eggs to early because 10 or 20 votes could swing the results either way," Haynes said.
For all results, national or local, our elections office has until December 1 to certify all results.
"We have to understand it could be a couple of weeks before we have a better idea of exactly the final results," Haynes said.
WATCH ALSO: