News

Why is the race for California’s 45th congressional district so close?

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Created four years ago to solidify the political clout of Little Saigon’s Vietnamese American community, California’s 45th congressional district has become one of the nation’s most narrowly contested House seats.

And with votes still being counted in a race that’s still too close to call, experts say the presence of a Vietnamese American on the general election ballot — a first for CA-45 — is a possible tipping point in a contest that could come down to a handful of votes.

Christine Pelosi is part of a small army of ballot ‘curers’ in wildly close California House race

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Christine Pelosi is one of many Bay Area volunteers who have headed to the Central Valley to “cure” ballots in an incredibly tight House race. On Wednesday afternoon, after a few days of volunteering in the Merced area, she was “staking out” a Modesto home with a colleague, hoping to connect with a voter whose ballot was rejected over a signature problem, she told the Chronicle.

CA vote count

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The Close Count Transparency Project: is a tracker created by the California Voter Foundation that provides daily updates on the results of 11 competitive U.S. House races and seven state legislative races, as well as the statewide vote count status. The tool tracks candidates’ vote share, votes counted and the number of unprocessed ballots in each county the districts cover. 

California’s slow vote count sows doubt. Here’s how one group is trying to fix that

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California has a notoriously slow ballot counting process — one that Kim Alexander describes as “a pig in the python.”

“This giant wad of ballots that all arrive at once, that all have to move through the process, and you can’t speed it up,” said Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. “You have to do every single step, otherwise you lose the integrity of the process.”

Some California House races haven’t been decided yet. Campaigns are making sure every ballot counts

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The election is over, and no more ballots can be cast. But campaigns in tight congressional races across California are scrambling to make sure their supporters’ votes are counted.

Through the increasingly common process known as “ballot curing,” campaigns are contacting voters whose ballots were not counted because of a technicality and giving them a chance to correct their mistakes. That could mean asking them to correct their address or add their signature to an envelope they forgot to sign. 

Decisive election waits for California’s results. What’s the hold-up?

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It’s been nearly a week since election day, and California is still counting ballots, imposing an agonizing wait on a nation wondering who will lead the next U.S. House of Representatives. 

It isn’t a surprise that California is taking its time to verify, process and count the ballots of its more than 22 million registered voters. 

While some might see the delay as a problem, Russia Chavis Cardenas, the voting rights and redistricting program manager for California Common Cause, called it a virtue.

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