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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. 

Why so slow? With a huge influx of ballots arriving all at once, they all must move through every step of the counting process that cannot be sped up. For example, in this past election cycle, more than 126,000 ballots in California needed to be “cured” — they had been rejected for missing or mismatched signatures and voters have time to submit a form to verify their signatures. The widespread use of vote-by-mail also slows the vote count.

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More than 11 days after polls closed around the nation and Donald Trump was declared president-elect of the United States, California is still moving methodically through roughly 800,000 uncounted ballots that are holding up final tallies in several contests.

As of Saturday, Nov. 16, two congressional races — including a local matchup between Republican Michelle Steel and Democrat Derek Tran in the 45th Congressional District, who are separated by just 58 votes — remained too close to call. Those races could play key roles in whether Republicans are able expand their new majority in the House, yet it could be days, or even weeks, until clear winners emerge.

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In 2020, California Democrats lost four of the seven competitive congressional seats they had just gained amid a “blue wave” two years earlier. In 2022, Republicans gained one more seat in California and took control of the U.S. House.

This election, it is Republicans who must play defense.

From the Central Valley to southern California, Democrats are fighting to flip five GOP-held seats in the state’s most competitive contests. They are also aiming to keep a competitive seat now held by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who has narrowly won the district for three terms and is not seeking re-election this year.

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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.

“It means elections officials are doing everything they can to count every legitimate ballot fairly and accurately,” Cardenas said. 

California has an estimated 5 million ballots that still need to be counted, according to the most recent report of unprocessed ballots by the California secretary of state.