This election reporting is provided free to all readers as a public service by your locally owned Cascadia Daily News. Thanks for supporting truly local news by donating to CDN or subscribing here.
On a cloudy Tuesday morning, 21 election officials sat in pairs at tables, slicing open plastic bags containing ballots and sorting ballots under the name of each candidate in the race for public lands commissioner. Next, the pairs counted each ballot with gloved hands, noting with green pen on a sheet of paper what the tally was.
The Whatcom County officials and others all across the state are leading a hand recount of ballots, following a 51-vote lead in a state executive race that more than 1.9 million Washingtonians voted in. The recount will determine who will face the leading candidate Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, in the November general election.
The only sound in the basement room of the courthouse was the HVAC unit and shush of ballots being organized. As pairs finished counting their ballot group, they raised a hand and either the Whatcom County Auditor or her deputy would come over to match the hand count tally with that of the tabulator’s tally.
In the room, reporters and six observers heard when Stacy Henthorn, the Whatcom County Auditor, told pairs “OK, you’ve matched,” before pulling another set of ballots and announcing the group to the room.
Henthorn would then take the counted ballots off to another side of the room and reseal them.
The mandatory hand recount was triggered by the slim lead Dave Upthegrove, a King County Council member, has over Sue Kuehl Pederson, a GOP-endorsed candidate.
State law requires that the recount be triggered by a difference between candidates less than 2,000 votes and less than 0.5%. The public lands commissioner clears that hurdle with the 51 vote difference, which is 0.0064% of the total vote difference.
If Upthegrove’s lead remains, he’ll face Beutler, a former U.S. representative for Washington’s 3rd District (southwest Washington), in November.
The recount started at 8:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 26, and lasted until 5 p.m., Henthorn said. On the first day, Whatcom County election officials got through about 33,000 ballots out of 73,000.
At the end of Monday, none of the hand-counted ballots varied from what the tabulator counted, Henthorn said.
“That’s a test of the system, that it has matched exactly,” she said.
On Tuesday, election officials started at 8 a.m. and Henthorn estimated they would stay until 5 p.m., with a break for lunch. Election officials will continue the recount throughout the week unless they finish early.
Henthorn said she’s seen more observers come into the counting room for the hand count than the counting for the primary races.
“People are more interested, I guess, in the hand count,” she said. “Or maybe they trust the Whatcom County Election Division.”
The public lands commissioner race is the first primary election recount since 1960 and the closest race in the history of Washington’s primary, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The last time Whatcom County had a mandatory hand recount was in the 2018 general election between Doug Ericksen and Pinky Vargas for the 42nd Legislative District Senate seat.
Ericksen won the seat by just 45 votes. Two years later, Ericksen died of COVID-19 after testing positive for the virus while in El Salvador.
Henthorn said the recount shows just how important it is for registered voters to vote in the primary races, where the top two candidates proceed to the general election.
Seven people ran for the lands commissioner race, two Republicans and five Democrats. About 57% of voters cast their ballot for a Democrat, according to the Seattle Times.
Once the recount is finished, if Upthegrove maintains his lead or Kuehl Pederson takes over, the county auditor’s office will get to work finishing the general election voter guide sent to registered voters across Whatcom County detailing the races and the candidates running.
General election ballots will be sent out starting Oct. 18, according to the Secretary of State office. Ballots must be received by the auditor’s office or dropped off in a ballot box by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.
A previous version of this story misspelled Stacy Henthorn’s first name. The story was updated to reflect the changed at 8:40 a.m. on Aug. 29, 2024. Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
