PORT ANGELES — For Edna Petersen’s campaign, “every vote counts” has become more than just a commonly used phrase during elections, it is the essence of a last-ditch strategy to put the local business owner back on the Port Angeles City Council.
On Tuesday morning, her campaign adviser, Andrew May, began calling the 25 Port Angeles voters who have had their ballots challenged because signatures were missing or invalid to encourage them to get the errors corrected and their ballots counted before the election is certified Nov. 24.
The motivation: Petersen, 69, is 30 votes behind her opponent, Max Mania, 41, in the contest for Position 2.
As of Tuesday’s count — the fourth vote tally in the Nov. 3 general election — Mania, a grocery clerk and writer who serves on several arts boards, has 2,721 votes, or 50.28 percent, while Petersen, who owns Necessities &Temptations gift shop and who served on the council as an appointee from 2006 to 2008, has 2,691 votes, or 49.72 percent.
In addition to the 25 challenged ballots from Port Angeles voters, there’s the possibly that there are ballots — likely from military personnel serving overseas — still working their way through the mail system, May said, so it is still possible that Petersen still could come out on top, or at least send the election into a mandatory machine or hand recount.
The next count of ballots will be next Tuesday, the Clallam County Auditor’s Office said, with the election certified on Nov. 24.
But he added that the only thing he can be confident about is that “all the votes will be counted.”
Petersen said she just wants everyone’s vote to matter. Her campaign would do the same if she were winning, she said.
“At this point in time . . . this is still really close, and there are people out there who had affidavits and their right to have their vote being important is important to me.”
Mania likes idea
Mania thinks it’s a good idea.
He plans to have his campaign join in.
“I’m all for participant democracy,” he said, “so every vote should be counted.”
Every voter who returns a ballot that cannot be counted because of a problem with its signature are sent an affidavit from the Auditor’s Office telling them they have until Nov. 23 — the day before the election is certified — to correct the error.
May said he received the names of the 25 voters from the Auditor’s Office. The information he received does not show who they voted for.
Who a person voted for is secret; the fact that a person voted is public record. Phoning people to urge them to make their vote count is legal, said Nick Handy, elections director for the Washington Secretary of State’s Office.
May said he identifies himself as part of Petersen’s campaign at the beginning of the phone calls and is not asking people who they voted for in the Mania-Petersen race.
Mania confident
Mania said he remains optimistic and added: “I’m confident that at the end of the day, the week, or the month, or whatever it turns out to be, the desire of progress in this town will be victorious over the forces of inertia.”
With a 0.56 percent vote difference between the two candidates, the race remains slightly above the 0.50 percent or lower requirement for a mandatory recount.
Candidates can still request a recount if the race doesn’t meet that requirement if they pay a fee for each ballot to cover the cost.
Petersen said she will not a request a recount if she doesn’t come out on top when the election is certified.
Petersen was leading by 11 votes after the first count Nov. 3 and by 31 votes after a count Friday.
Mania — who is a board member of the Port Angeles Community Players, Friends of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center and Port Angeles Arts Council — pulled ahead Monday by 32 votes.
His lead shrank slightly Tuesday when 21 Port Angeles ballots were counted.
A total of 518 Port Angeles ballots have been returned without a vote for either Petersen or Mania.
To date, 5,932 ballots out of the 11,028 mailed to Port Angeles voters have been returned.
That places voter turnout for the city at nearly 54 percent.
Countywide, voter turnout sits at 56 percent, with 25,619 ballots out of the 45,739 mailed to registered voters returned — a number that reflects only ballots submitted with proper signatures.
Anti-incumbent sentiment
Petersen, who is also a Clallam Business Incubator board member, attributed the close race in part to anti-incumbent sentiment among voters.
She said she is largely seen as an incumbent because she has already served on the council.
Petersen pointed to Sequim City Council member Walt Schubert’s loss in the general election and the tight, and still undetermined race, between Port of Port Angeles commission incumbent John Calhoun and his challenger, Brad Collins, as other examples.
She ran for re-election to the City Council in the 2007 general election but was defeated by Dan Di Guilio.
The winner of the Mania-Petersen contest will replace City Council member Larry Williams, a real estate agent who has served on the council since 1998 and is facing a term limit.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
