Razor-thin House race in California too close to call weeks after election day

More than two weeks after election day, there are more than half a million ballots left to count in California, and one of the most closely watched US House races remains too close to call with a razor-thin margin between Michelle Steel and Derek Tran.

Democratic challenger Tran has a 314-vote lead over the Republican incumbent in the congressional contest in the southern California district. Republicans already control the US House, as well as the Senate, but picking up the seat would be a big win for Democrats, who lost it to Steel in 2020.

Although Steel initially had a commanding lead, the race became neck and neck as election workers tallied more ballots. There are nearly 40,000 ballots left to process in Orange county and more than 30,000 in Los Angeles county, where the district is based.

The close contest has brought attention to California’s slow ballot counting. California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, has defended that process. County election offices have until one month after the election to certify the results, and the state has another week after that, Weber said.

“The reason why we do this is because we respect every vote that comes in,” Weber said to reporters last week.

Weber attributed the slow count to the signature-verification process the state undertakes, which acts as a safeguard to prevent voter fraud, and to the fact that most votes come in by mail, which requires election workers to verify signatures. California also allows voters to register on election day, but that registration must be verified before a ballot is counted, and the state accepts mail-in ballots that are post-marked by election day up to a week later.

“I tell people I think if we were counting your vote and we had some questions about it, you’d want us to be accurate,” Weber said. “You’d want us to go in and find out that it’s really your signature.”

Still, California’s slow count has drawn intense criticism and fueled disinformation about the integrity of the state’s elections. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative from Georgia who has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about topics ranging from elections to wildfires, baselessly accused the state of “election rigging”.

“The Democrats are stealing a House seat right out from under us in CA,” she claimed over the weekend.

Tran has said “we owe it to every Californian to ensure their voice is heard” and pointed out that the remaining ballots were “lawfully cast”.

“These votes count just as much as those from early voters,” Tran said. “I am grateful to the election workers who continue to do their essential work in the face of lies, hostility, and bomb threats.”

If Tran manages to hold his lead over Steel, he will be the first Vietnamese American member of Congress, and represent an area with the largest population of ethnic Vietnamese people outside Vietnam.

Steel, who is Korean American, is considered a powerful and well-funded Republican incumbent, with deep roots in county politics.

Before the election, Democrats were cautiously confident that Tran could unseat Steel. But the campaign was bruising and among the most adversarial in the region.

Orange county was once a conservative stronghold but is now purple, meaning that congressional and presidential contests are truly competitive. A poll from the University of California, Irvine earlier this year suggested the county would swing left in the November election due to independent and “modestly partisan Republicans”.