Election follow-up, the recount

Yeah, I know. You all thought the election was, thankfully, over, done, and behind us. And mostly it is. We had a very few wins and a whole lot of painful losses.

One race, however, remains to be decided in a recount. That is the race for Island County Commissioner, district 3, with Karla Jacks 143 votes behind Rick Hannold. That’s out of a total of 29,583 votes cast. Do the math and the difference comes to 0.48% of the vote. By state law, if the difference is less than 0.5%, there must be a recount. What we don’t know is how many votes were set aside as “undervotes.” That is what this recount is all about.

Thanks to Jane Seymour for doing the homework on this one. Here’s what she discovered:

The recount will be overseen by three sitting public officials:

County Prosecutor Greg Banks

County Commissioner Helen Price-Johnson

County Auditor Sheilah Crider.

This is a public process and I strongly encourage members of the public to attend and keep a sharp eye out.

There will not be a recount of every single ballot. The existing counts, done separately for each precinct, will be “validated”, and I’m not at all sure what that means. There will be a close and thorough examination of the log of “undervotes” which was created during the counting process.  By law every person whose ballot is questioned (an 'undervote') must be contacted by the Auditor’s office, so they may correct whatever error is claimed. Those errors can include:

            ~ no vote for the office

            ~ the mark is not in the box but near it

            ~ its not clear that the mark is intentional

            and I’m sure there are others.

There are also those voters who failed to sign the outside of the envelope, or who signed with a name different from what’s in the Auditor’s files, or whose signature doesn’t look the same as the original in the Auditor’s files.

If you or anyone you know received a phone call or a postcard from the Auditor’s office, please PLEASE contact them ASAP to correct whatever error, and make your ballot count.

The recount is scheduled for December 1. It will very likely take all day, or even longer. Please consider spending a thrilling hour or two or three participating in this civic exercise.

If you really want to dig into this, the relevant laws are:

RCW 29A.64 dealing with recounts

WAC 434.264 dealing with rules for recounts

You can check out the Secretary of State’s website for more information:

www.sos.wa.gov/elections/administrators.aspx

or you can phone the Secretary of State’s office, Elections Division, at 360-902-4180