An official canvass of ballots in Douglas County produced a net gain of two votes for Rep. Ann Mah, D-Topeka, in the tightly contested race against Republican challenger Ken Corbet for the 54th District in the Kansas House.

County commissioners are meeting this morning as the Board of Canvassers to certify ballots for each of the precincts in the county.

The 54th District includes a small portion of western Douglas County where ballots from two polling places had the potential to influence the race.

There were four provisional ballots cast in those two precincts that included votes in the 54th District House race. Of those, three were for Mah and one was for Corbet.

Unofficial results on Election Night showed Corbet leading by 27 votes: 5,330 to 5,303, a margin of one-fourth of a percentage point. But a canvass in votes from Osage County, which also includes part of the 54th District, widened Corbet’s lead to 44 votes.

The Douglas County canvass narrows that lead to 42 votes, which means the race will come down to the canvass in Shawnee County, which includes the bulk of the district. That canvass is also taking place today.

Since Election Night, the race has been the subject of legal challenges when Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican, filed suit in federal court seeking to prevent Mah from obtaining from county officials the names of the voters who had cast provisional ballots.

Kobach lost that battle Wednesday when U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten denied Kobach’s request for a restraining order.