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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA)

California’s presidential primary is just 11 months away and work is already in progress to make sure the state is ready to count every vote.

The California election map is changing thanks to the Voter’s Choice Act, and there are now 11 counties that have replaced neighborhood polling places with voting centers. Voters in Los Angeles County will not automatically be sent a vote by mail ballot, but they will have to request one.

In three rural counties – Sierra, Plumas and Alpine – residents can only vote by mail. 

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Two special elections were held in California on Tuesday, both for state Senate seats, and the enthusiasm among voters couldn’t have been more different.

In the Northern California’s 1st District, 26 percent of voters showed up to cast ballots. In the 33rd, which includes Long Beach and parts of southeast Los Angeles County, less than 7 percent showed up.

To put that in perspective, the third-place finisher in the 1st District race received more raw votes than the first-place finisher—Long Beach Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez—in the 33rd.

“I’d be hard-pressed to come up with two districts that are more different from one another,” said Rob Pyers, research director for the California Target Book, which provides comprehensive data to political professionals.

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California loves to talk about itself in superlatives: The nation’s most populous state. The fifth-largest economy in the world. Producer of tech titans and Hollywood blockbusters and a whole lot of fruits and veggies.

But even as it basks in its outsize economic and cultural influence, something has been gnawing at the state’s psyche. When it comes to presidential politics, we’re more backbencher than behemoth.

The moving of California’s 2020 presidential primary to March 3 — nipping at the heels of the four traditional early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — is the latest bid to play with the calendar in hopes of gaining more electoral relevance. This will be the fifth time since 1992 the state has moved its presidential primary. It's bounced around: June, March, February and back again.

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As state election officials watch an angry President Trump and other partisan leaders slam what they claim are slow vote counts, political influence and delayed results in Florida, Georgia and Arizona elections, they have one thought: That could be California.

Days after Tuesday’s election, a handful of closely watched congressional races in California still haven’t been decided and a final count is days and possibly weeks away.

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The first problem is a simple one: California is a really big state with a lot of people who vote.

By the time all the state’s precincts had reported on election night, about 7.4 million votes had been counted. But by Friday, there were still more than 4.8 million late-arriving and provisional ballots to be tallied.