Matthew Alvarez, a partner at Rutan and Tucker who specializes in election law, called the results shocking.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my career,” he said.

Alvarez noted that the race, which only saw a 41% voter turnout, could have swung a different way if any of the roughly 262,000 voters that didn’t cast a ballot in the district had decided not to stay home on Election Day.

California normally has a top-two primary, where the top two vote-getters move on to the general election, but when two candidates tie for #2, you end up with a 3-way general election:

If only one candidate receives the highest number of votes cast but there is a tie vote among two or more candidates receiving the second highest number of votes cast, each of those second-place candidates shall be a candidate at the ensuing general election along with the candidate receiving the highest number of votes cast, regardless of whether there are more candidates at the general election than prescribed by this article.

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