There have been a few questions raised about why – after a remarkably smooth election night – the Riverside County Registrar of Voters won’t have more results until Friday evening.

The county has 49,200 ballots that must still be counted. And by all accounts, that’s fairly typical.

Election officials across California have until July 3 to finish canvassing and until July 6 to provide a certified vote count to the Secretary of State.

“While Election Day has come and gone, the meticulous tasks of reviewing signatures on vote-by-mail envelopes and verifying registrations of people who voted provisionally continues in each of the 58 counties,” Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in a statement today.

In Riverside County, staffers will start processing the remaining ballots on Thursday:

– Counting the 38,000 remaining vote by mail ballots is a tedious process that includes about a half-dozen steps, including validating every voter signature.

– Staff will check the 7,000 provisional ballots to ensure no one voted more than once.

– Election officials will also duplicate the 4,200 ballots that were damaged to ensure every vote gets counted.

The California Secretary of State’s office eon Thursday will release similar details for the other counties too. They’ll be posted here.

Riverside County is expected to post more results around 6 p.m. Friday.