Salomon, McClelland within range for mandatory hand recount

By Evan Smith

Shoreline City Council candidates Jesse Salomon and Robin McClelland are within the range for a mandatory recount, probably a hand recount.

State law requires a recount whenever two candidates are within 0.5 percent of their combined total.

Salomon led McClelland in the Tuesday, Nov. 15, vote count with 6,876 votes to 6,854 for McClelland. Salomon’s 22-vote lead reversed McClelland’s 107-vote lead from Monday and her 469-vote lead the day after the election.

The two candidates’ current combined total of 13,730 votes means that a margin of 68 votes or fewer would trigger a machine recount and a margin of 34 votes or fewer would trigger a hand recount.

A machine recount means that elections officials run all ballots from Shoreline City voters through the counting machines after separating them from other King County ballots. A hand recount means that two-person teams of people appointed by County Democrats and Republicans, with supervision from County officials, count stacks of ballots until they agree on totals.

The Tuesday results came with 7 to 9 percent of King County ballots left to be counted.

The County voter turnout was 47.37 percent as of Tuesday, compared to an expected final countywide turnout of 52 percent.

Turnout in the City of Shoreline was 49.71 percent through Tuesday.

Of the 16,618 ballots counted in the City, 2,847 had left the McClelland-Salomon contest blank, and 41 had cast write-in votes.

King County has about 552,000 ballots on hand with about 39,000 uncounted – almost 7 percent. Elections officials had expected to get more than 563,000 ballots. The current count of 512,930 is more than 50,000 short of that -- almost 9 percent.

The number of uncounted ballots statewide is only 3.1 percent. The statewide turnout was 50.74 percent through Tuesday – well ahead of the expected 47-48 percent.