Control of the U.S. House of Representatives could depend on the results of several congressional races in California that are still too close to call — and whose outcome could depend on the arrival of late ballots in the mail.
California allows ballots to be counted if they arrive up to seven days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day itself. That has left several races in Orange County and in the Central Valley hanging in the balance.
Politico reported:
Most pressure bears down squarely on the Golden State, where Democrats hoped to flip as many as five red seats, as well as hold on to the swingy Orange County district being vacated by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter. As of Wednesday, Republicans held the lead, mostly with narrow margins, in all six races.
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California campaign strategists spent much of Wednesday trying to assess the number of remaining outstanding ballots, which could be upward of 100,000 uncounted votes or more in key districts.
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Democrats have been bailed out by a prolonged count before. The party infamously swept seven GOP-held seats in 2018, only after a marked “blue shift” of late-processed mail and election day ballots — an outcome then-Republican Speaker Paul Ryan derided as “bizarre.”
After 2018, which saw the debut of legal “ballot harvesting” by Democrats, Republicans embraced the practice and won back several seats they had lost.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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