Democrat Adam Gray has expanded his lead over incumbent Republican Rep. John Duarte in California’s 13th congressional district.
According to the Associated Press, Gray has received 104,991 votes so far compared to 104,801 for Duarte, a lead of just 190 votes with an estimated 99 percent of votes counted.
Gray’s lead has grown slightly since Nov. 27 when it was 182 votes with him receiving 104,503 votes to Duarte’s 104,321.
California, the nation’s most populous state, is notoriously slow to count ballots as elections are conducted almost entirely by mail. These ballots are allowed to arrive up to a week after the election if postmarked by Election Day.
Mail-in ballots also take a longer time to verify and on top of that, voters have several days after the election to address any problems that may arise with their ballot.
Duarte was leading on election day but as officials start to count mail-in ballots that lead evaporated and Gray pulled ahead.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) has filed a lawsuit to stop California from counting mailing ballots after election day.
“It is absurd for California to accept ballots by mail up to 7 days after Election Day and take almost a month to count them,” RNC co-chair Michael Whatley wrote in a post on X.
“The RNC has filed lawsuits to stop this and will continue to fight aggressively to force all states to stop accepting ballots after Election Day,” he added.
Duarte flipped the seat in the 2022 midterms by 564 votes.
Republicans have already regain control of the House after winning 220 seats in the November election, to Democrats 215. It is a much smaller margin that the party’s current majority in the House and could get even narrower for a few months as two members leave to join Trump’s cabinet and a third, Rep. Matt Gaetz, says he will not be returning to Congress after withdrawing himself from consideration to serve as Trump’s attorney general amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
