Tight races may earn recount

Published 11:22 pm Tuesday, November 11, 2008

EVERETT — After months of competition and thousands of ballots counted, Democratic Rep. Liz Loomis and Republican Mike Hope still do not know today which of them won the election.

And they may not know for weeks.

That’s because their battle for state representative in the 44th Legislative District is so close a recount may be ordered to determine the winner.

Hope, of Lake Stevens, leads Loomis, of Snohomish, by 118 votes, or 0.18 percent, out of 65,548 ballots tallied thus far. Updated numbers are due late this afternoon.

Precisely how many ballots remain uncounted is not known. Hope said his campaign staff tells him it may be as many as 2,000.

“In our estimation, these will break down 50-50 between us, then we’re going off to a recount,” said Hope, 33, who is making his third bid in four years for a seat in the Legislature.

Loomis, 38, who was appointed in January to the Position 2 seat, said, “I am expecting there will be a recount. We always knew it would be a close race, so this is no surprise.”

Recounts are rare with the most historic being the 2004 gubernatorial race. And in 2000, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., unseated incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton following a second tally.

In Snohomish County, one of the last notable recounts did not involve a lawmaker but a bond measure.

After checking the votes twice, election workers found an $8.1 million bond to build a new library in Arlington failed by 28 votes. The measure captured 59.69 percent of the vote but needed a 60 percent supermajority to pass.

State law requires recounts in tight races and spells out when ballots will be recounted by hand and when it will be done by machine.

The key is the closeness of the race.

A hand count is required when fewer than 150 votes separate the candidates and the percentage between them is less than a quarter of 1 percent (0.25 percent).

This is the situation today in Hope-Loomis contest.

A machine recount is required when the race is a little less tight. It is triggered when the candidates are separated by less than 2,000 votes and a margin of less than one-half of one percent. No machine recount would be ordered unless both circumstances exist.

If one is needed between Hope and Loomis, the Snohomish County Canvassing Board will authorize it Nov. 25 after certifying results of the tally now under way.

The situation will be slightly different if a recount is needed in the 10th Legislative District, where as of Tuesday Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, leads Democrat Tim Knue of Conway by 450 votes and a margin of .68 percent.

Because that district lies partly in Snohomish, Island and Skagit counties, each county will certify results of its portion Nov. 25. Those numbers get sent to Secretary of State Sam Reed to add up and he will notify county auditors if a recount is mandated.

For both contests, the process would start after Thanksgiving and not conclude until early to mid-December.

In the Hope-Loomis competition, the first task will be separating, by hand, each of the roughly 72,000 ballots cast in the 44th Legislative district from the 250,000 ballots from other parts of the county. (About 18,000 10th District ballots need separating.)

Segregated ballots can then be fed into a vote-counting machine and results known fairly quickly.

A hand tally will take longer as ballots in the legislative district must also be broken down by precincts.

Then the actual counting is done by pairs of people, one each from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party with an election worker observing and verifying the calculations.

State law only requires one recount regardless of the outcome.

Candidates can request another tabulation as long as they are willing to pay for it. They get their money back if the results change. This happened in 2004 when Chris Gregoire requested the hand count that brought her victory.

In Snohomish County, elections director Garth Fell is not looking ahead yet.

“We’re proceeding according to our plan for completing the election,” he said. “We still have two weeks until certification and certainly some considerable work to be done before then.”

At the Snohomish County ballot processing center on Pacific Avenue, two main tasks are under way.

Workers are making duplicates of ballots rejected by vote-counting machines. Fell said voters sometimes do something to their ballot to make it unreadable and state law allows making a copy to reinsert into the devices.

The second chore is contacting voters who either failed to sign their ballot or whose signature does not match the one on their voter registration form.

Each day, the county produces a list of voters to be contacted to clear up the problem. Supporters of Hope and Loomis are getting the lists, too, and making their own efforts to get voters to respond quickly to ensure their ballot is tallied.

Reporter Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.

Get the scoop on recounts

A primer on recounts can be found on the Secretary of State’s Web site at www.secstate.wa.gov/_assets/elections/Recounts-FAQ.pdf.