As days go by and more precincts report election numbers in, the two names that will appear on the November ballot for Assembly District 12 are becoming clearer.

According to the Secretary of State’s website, the race for State Assembly District 12 is still considered to be a “close contest,” an unchanged descriptor since voting closed on June 7.

A “close contest” is defined as a contest in which there is less than a two percent difference between first and second place. In the case of the District 12 race, since the top two vote getters advance to the November ballot, the less than two percent difference applies to the second and third highest vote getters.

As of June 17, Ken Vogel (R) currently sits atop the election results tallying 24.3 percent of the votes in District 12. The real race, however, is for the second State Assembly candidate as Heath Flora (R) currently leads over Virginia Madueno (D) 23.2 to 21.7 percent.

Here in the City of Turlock, over 29,000 residents were registered to vote leading up to the June 7 election day. With a total of 219,255 registered voters in Stanislaus County, Turlock voters made up over 13 percent of voters countywide, second only to Modesto and unincorporated voters.

California law requires that certification of the election occur either on or before July 7, 30 days following Election Day.

The Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters will be tasked with the continuing ballot counting which is expected to take several more days at least. The ROV must count not only the ballots from the 150 polling place rosters but also the remaining absentee, military, damaged and the Election Day +3 ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by June 10.

 As it stands now the two State Assembly members representing District 12 would be Ken Vogel (R) and Heath Flora (R), but with hundreds or even thousands of ballots still to count, it could be anyone’s race.