BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – Tight races in Congressional District 22 and Supervisory District 5 remain close as ballots are still being counted.

Tuesday was the last day the elections office received ballots to process, unless they needed to be corrected — meaning there was a problem with a voter’s first ballot and A new ballot had to be filed and sent to the elections office to be counted.

Fewer than 50,000 ballots remain to be processed from Nov. 5 election: Kern County elections office

Rudy Salas’ campaign went door to door Tuesday to encourage voters whose ballots were returned to correct their mistakes and return them.

“There were about 5,600 get well letters sent out and we received about 3,700,” said Aimee Espinoza, Kern County Registrar of Voters.

Cured ballots have until Dec. 1 to be returned to the elections office to be counted as a vote.

Aside from those, there are still thousands of ballots to be processed: “We have about 50,000 and they are being processed in different locations,” Espinoza said. “Certainly by Friday we will have the polling location, everything received before the election and all ballots received before E+7.”

“E+7” are postal ballots postmarked on election day and received by the electoral division.

These votes are crucial in the tight races remaining in the county. The District 5 supervisor race between Leticia Perez and Kimberly Salas is the closest, with Perez leading by just four votes.

The highly competitive Congressional District 22 race between David Valadao and Rudy Salas remained close, with Valadao leading by just over 1,200 votes from Kern County. But district-wide, Valadao leads by an even larger margin, about 9,500 votes over Salas, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.

California’s 22nd Congressional District is described as a purple district, meaning it could swing one way or the other. And on Tuesday evening, the Associated Press called the race for Valadao.

17 News reached out to all candidates in both races but did not receive a response from them. Leticia Perez declined to comment.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, election officials said about 33,395 ballots still needed to be processed.

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