A tight Lynnwood City Council contest from the Nov. 3 ballot got even tighter in votes counted through Thursday.
The 72 Lynnwood ballots counted Thursday showed that the margin between city council incumbent Benjamin Goodwin and challenger Chris Frizzell, which appeared Tuesday to be small enough to force a machine recount, is now close to the threshold for a hand recount.
Goodwin’s lead over Frizzell dropped Thursday to just 14 votes, 0.26 percent of the 5,310 total votes for the two of them. The contest would have a recount if the margin would stay 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.
A machine recount means running the ballots through counting machines for a second time. A hand recount requires teams of two people to look at every ballot to determine voter intent.
The Thursday count shows Goodwin with 2,662 votes, 49.89 percent of the votes, to Frizzell’s 2,648 votes, 49.63 percent.
Frizzell had outpolled Goodwin 45.85 percent to 41.04 percent in a three-way August primary.
The next closest contest in South Snohomish County shows Edmonds School Board candidate Carin Chase holding a 50.44 percent to 49.17 percent lead over opponent Bill Willcock for an open position that director district 1 board member Kory DeMun is giving up.
The position is one of four Edmonds School Board positions on the November ballot. The School District includes Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Woodway, nearby unincorporated areas and part of Brier. Voters throughout the School District vote for each position, but candidates must live in the director districts they wish to represent. Director District 1, in the southwest corner of the school district, includes Woodway, the south part of the City of Edmonds and nearby unincorporated areas, and the southwest corner of Mountlake Terrace.
In Lynnwood City Council contests, results show three challengers all leading incumbents. Challenger George Hurst leads incumbent Sid Roberts by a 53.41 percent to 46.05 percent margin, challenger Shirley Sutton leads incumbent Loren Simmonds by a 56.60 percent to 42.68 percent margin, and challenger Shannon Sessions leads incumbent Van AuBuchon 56.65 percent to 42.83 percent.
Snohomish County elections officials have counted all ballots on hand except for about 4 percent that need to be duplicated to prepare them for the counting machines. They also will need to count ballots that require voters to repair missing signatures or signatures that don’t match the signatures on file.
County officials plan to post updated returns each business day through final certification of results Nov. 24.
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.
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