Remaining uncounted Lynnwood ballots will decide whether a contest on the Nov. 3 ballot will go to a recount.
Ballots counted through Tuesday show incumbent Councilman Benjamin Goodwin holding a slight lead over challenger Chris Frizzell.
Goodwin widened his lead over Frizzell Tuesday to 26 votes, 0.49 percent of 5,238 total votes for the two candidates, from his Monday lead of 23 votes, 0.44 percent of the then 5,151 votes for the two candidates. The contest would have a recount if the margin stays at no more than 0.50 percent. It would be a machine recount unless the margin gets below 0.25 percent, the level that would trigger an automatic hand recount.
Snohomish County elections officials have counted all ballots on hand except for about 4 percent that need to be duplicated to run through the counting machines. Most of those are ballots that counting machines rejected because voters had drawn an “X” over their original choices before marking another choice. Other ballots had to be duplicated because the scanning machines had rejected them due to marking errors. Determining voter intent requires two outside observers who must reach agreement.
County elections officials also will need to count ballots that they have returned to voters to repair missing signatures or signatures that don’t match the signatures on file.
County officials will post updated returns each business day through final certification of results Nov. 24.
Any recount would be scheduled after certification of results.
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.
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