The race for the second ballot line in November’s Kent School Board District No. 5 race appears to be headed for a recount.
Results are scheduled to be certified today (Sept. 2) but all indications are that the number of votes separating candidates Dale Smith and Dave Watson is so few that a mandatory recount appears inevitable.
As of the Aug. 27 numbers, Smith led Watson by only 22 votes for the second ballot line, a difference of 0.12 percent of the total vote count.
Tim Clark handily won the Aug. 18 primary, gaining more than 51 percent of ballots cast. He will move on to the November general election, but is still waiting to see who his opponent will be.
In this particular race, the competition for the second ballot line is even more interesting because Smith announced this past month that he was dropping out of the race because of a change in his work status at Boeing and would neither campaign nor be able to serve to if elected.
Under Washington State election law, however, Smith’s withdrawal from the race came too late and if he finishes in the top two in the primary, his name will appear on the ballot.
According to Kim van Ekstrom, chief communications officer for King County Elections, a machine recount is required if the difference between the vote totals of the two candidates is less than 2,000 votes and 0.5 percent. A hand recount is required if there is a difference less than 150 votes or 0.25 percent.
The key is that it must be the percentage difference between the two candidates, not the entire vote count.
For example, using the Aug. 27 numbers, Smith received 4,147 votes while Watson received 4,125 for a total of 8,272 votes. The 22-vote difference accounts for a 0.26 percent difference in the totals, meaning it would be a machine recount.
However, in a race that has seen the difference between the candidates drop as low as 11 during the daily updates, there is still time for the numbers to get closer together before the election is certified.
Should the race end within one of the recount margins, van Ekstrom said the first step for the election division would to pull all of the ballots dealing with the Director District No. 5 race. Each ballot would be either re-run through the processing equipment or counted by hand.
“The bulk of the time associated with a recount … be really be oriented toward pulling the appropriate ballots,” van Ekstrom said.
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