SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s 13th Congressional District seat is the last uncalled national race in the country, and it’s tight. As counting winds down, Rep. John Duarte and Adam Gray are in an even closer contest than in their previous matchup.

The California Secretary of State’s election results update posted Wednesday shows Gray in the lead by just 182 votes. Two years ago, when the the men battled it out for the House, Duarte won the seat by 564 votes.

At the current stage of the counting process, both local Democratic and Republican parties and supporters are mobilizing to help voters “cure” their ballots. They’re reaching out to people with missing or mismatched signatures and encouraging them to correct the issues so their votes are counted.

Julie Carrol, president of Modesto Republican Women Federated, said her group is trying to help cure ballots in Stanislaus County.

“They go in person, take a form from the County Clerk’s office and knock on that person’s door and tell them their vote is not yet counted, and just ask them, ‘Would you please fill out the form?’ Then it’s sent back to the Clerk-Recorder’s Office for them,” Carrol said.

Likewise, Democrats on Nov. 26 launched an effort to help cure ballots in Modesto.

Campaigns can buy voter lists to work on curing

Donna Linder, Stanislaus County registrar, said each voter already has been contacted by her office. But campaigns can purchase from her office the list of voters who still need ballot cures, to follow up with them, she said.

“Campaigns will call or go to their house or whatever and encourage them to sign and either give the forms to the campaigns, because they can harvest them, or send it in themselves,” Linder said.

As of Nov. 26, Gray is leading in Stanislaus County, with 53% of the vote.

On top of ballot curing, Linder said, “The office continues processing of 196 conditional ballots.”

California law allows people to register after the general registration deadline, up to and including Election Day. These conditional ballots need to be verified for eligibility before they are counted.

“Sometimes those people were registered in a different county, so we have to double-check them all, merge their records, because voter registration is statewide,” Linder said. “It’s just a process of researching them — they take longer.”

Voters have until Dec. 1 to return their cured ballots, according to Assembly Bill 3184, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. The county’s next update will be Dec. 3, which also is the date when the county can certify the election results and submit them to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Duarte vs. Gray is one of two races for the House of Representatives between Republicans and Democrats in California that were tight leading towards the Dec. 1 ballot cure deadline. The other was between Michelle Steel, an incumbent Republican in Orange County, and her challenger, Democrat Derek Tran. In that race, the candidates were separated by 613 votes. The AP called the race for Tran on Nov. 27.

There was another close House race in Iowa, with Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks leading narrowly against Christina Bohannan, called by the AP Nov. 27 after a recount.

The Duarte-Gray race is the last uncalled in the country.

Emily Lee, executive director of Seed the Vote, an independent group working on ballot curing in Congressional District 13 with the intent to tip the House seat blue, said she thinks in this race ballot curing could make a difference.

“In some cases, ballot curing doesn’t really make a difference. But in this case, it’s like Derek Tran’s victory was, what, 500, 600 votes, and then for Adam Gray, who’s up by only 182 votes, the curing is really important,” she said.

GOP doesn’t have much of a majority in House

Though originally the Duarte-Gray race was viewed as an opportunity for Democrats to take the House majority, at this point, Republicans will continue to lead starting Jan. 3, according to the Associated Press.

However, if both Gray and Tran win, that leaves the GOP with a slim majority in the House, especially if the new administration goes through with appointing two House Republicans to executive positions, leaving those seats vacant for weeks or possibly months.

There’s also a vacancy in the Republican side of the House because Rep. Matt Gaetz resigned and withdrew his nomination for attorney general.

Given the small margin in the 13th District race, it’s likely that either or both parties will be highly interested in a recount.

There are no automatic recounts in California, so voters and campaigns would need to request a recount at their own expense after the full canvas of votes Dec. 3-8.

The Secretary of State will provide the official statement of votes on Dec. 13.

“Even though the election’s over, and most of the country has moved on, some of these hard-core volunteers are just like, ‘No, I’m still going to try to win this race and make sure that curing can actually impact that,’” Seed the Vote’s Lee said.

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