PORT ANGELES — After a fourth round of ballot counting today (Tuesday), incumbent John Calhoun still leads Brad Collins — now by 17 votes — in the seesaw race for the Position 3 seat on the three-member Port of Port Angeles board of commissioners.
The Max Mania-Edna Petersen race for the Port Angeles City Council remains too close to call, with Mania now leading by 30 votes.
The Calhoun-Collins port race and Mania-Petersen council races could go to a mandatory recount. (See information below.)
There will be no further vote counts until next week.
After counting 101 ballots today — all the valid ballots that were in hand — Calhoun, 65, who lives in Forks, stretched to a 17-vote lead over Collins — 9,268 votes (50.05 percent) for Calhoun to 9,251 for Collins (49.95 percent).
Calhoun had a whisker-thin lead of 9 votes in the third round of vote counting on Monday and had a 48-vote lead Tuesday night.
Before Monday’s ballot count, when a surge of Forks-West End votes were counted, Collins, 61, who lives in Port Angeles, had been ahead of Calhoun by 196 votes based on Friday’s second round of vote counting.
Mania’s 30-vote lead over Petersen for Port Angeles City Council Position 2 gave him 50.28 percent of the vote (2,721) to Petersen’s 49.72 percent (2,691).
Mania, 41, a grocery clerk and writer, was trailing Petersen, 69, owner of Necessities and Temptations gift shop, by 11 votes in ballot counting Tuesday night. He took a 31-vote lead after Friday’s count and had a 32-voted lead on Monday.
In other Port Angeles races, Brooke Nelson, 37, a real estate agent, increased her lead for City Council Position 4 from 119 votes on Monday to 128 today over incumbent Betsy Wharton, 49, who serves as the city’s deputy mayor.
Wharton admitted defeat on Monday and congratulated Nelson. Nelson will join the other election winners, Larry Little and Patrick Downie, on the council in January 2010.
There were no other substantial changes in the other election races.
With today’s count of 101 ballots, the Clallam County Auditor’s Office has counted all the ballots it has in hand, said Shoona Radon, elections supervisor, who added that she does not expect any more ballots to come from Clallam County residents serving in the military overseas.
Another count is scheduled next Tuesday (Nov. 17) for any of the 133 ballots with missing or invalid signatures that have been fixed. Voters who returned those ballots have been notified, and must go to the auditor’s office at the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles, to resolve the problems.
Twenty-five of the invalid ballots are from Port Angeles, Radon said.
Radon said she “guesstimates” that about 20 ballots will have had problems resolved and be counted next week.
County Auditor Patty Rosand said her office also got two provisional ballots from Kittitas County that will be opened Nov. 23. That means two Clallam voters cast ballots from Kittitas County. “Those ballots will likely only have state measures that can be counted locally,” Rosand said.
The Canvassing Board will meet in an open public meeting at 9 a.m. on Nov. 23 in the Clallam Courthouse to review ballots, and again at 11 a.m. on Nov. 24 to certify the election.
Based on today’s count, countywide voter turnout in Tuesday’s election was 56.01 percent, Rosand said.
RECOUNT INFORMATION
Any race that ends with less than a half of a percentage-point (0.50) difference goes to an automatic machine recount.
A race that ends with one candidate leading by a quarter (0.25) of a percentage point or less goes to an automatic hand recount, said David Ammons, spokesman for the state Secretary of State
The Calhoun-Collins race for the six-year seat on the three-member port commission is now one-tenth (0.1) of a percent apart; Mania-Petersen is 0.56 percent apart based on today’s count.
A hand recount for port commissioner — the only county-wide race on the general election ballot — would take two or three days, county Auditor Patty Rosand said.
A candidate trailing by more than a half of a percentage point can ask for a recount, but he or she would have to pay for it. The cost is 25 cents a ballot for a hand-recount and 15 cents a ballot for a machine recount, Rosand said.
If the results of the election change, the amount of the ballot recount is refunded.
It is uncommon for a candidate to pay for a recount, Rosand said.
Click on http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/CLALLAM/ELECTIONS/Pages/ElectionResults.aspx for full election results as of today (Tuesday).
In-depth coverage of the results of today’s vote count — with the prospect for at least one recount and reaction from the candidates — will be in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News and at www.peninsuladailynews.com.
