EVERETT — Janet St. Clair held a 61-vote lead over incumbent state Sen. Ron Muzzall in the 10th Legislative District contest as election officials dropped a second round of results Wednesday evening.
Just 153 votes separated them Tuesday night.
St. Clair now holds 49.99%% of the vote to Muzzall’s 49.89%. St. Clair, a Democrat, serves on the Island County Board of Commissioners. St. Clair has 28,678 votes and Muzzall has 28,617.
In an email, Muzzall wrote his race was “going about how we expected.”
The district covers Island County, a wide swath of the north coast of Snohomish County, as well as Arlington and parts of Skagit County.
State Reps. Clyde Shavers and Dave Paul, both Democrats, held onto leads in the 10th District over Republican challengers. Shavers held a 54.1% to 45.8% lead over Carrie Kennedy. Paul had 54.4% of the vote to Gary Wray’s 45.5%.
“As votes continue to be counted, I look forward to bringing everyone back together and moving forward,” Shavers wrote in an email Wednesday. “We are stronger together, and I continue to always be committed to fighting for our shared vision in Olympia.”
In Washington, a machine recount is required when candidates are separated by less than 2,000 votes and also less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast total.
A manual recount is required when the difference is less than 150 votes and also less than 0.25% of the total votes cast for both candidates.
Snohomish County has just over 3,000 challenged ballots, according to county election data. On Wednesday, the county auditor’s office received a little over 22,000 mail-in ballots. About 80,000 ballots still needed to be counted in Snohomish County.
As long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they will be counted. To check your ballot status and get more information, go to VoteWA.gov.
Turnout in the election was 73.82% in Snohomish County after the second ballot drop.
In Lake Stevens, voters were still defeating a 20-year, $314 million bond measure after the second ballot drop. Approval sat at 56.52%, short of the 60% needed for approval. If passed, it would build a new elementary school and modernize other buildings throughout the district. It also would have made, “district-wide safety, security, health, educational, athletic and infrastructure improvements,” the ballot measure stated.
Some schools in the district are in dire straits, including Glenwood Elementary, which doesn’t have doors and curtains divide classrooms.
Jordan Hansen: 425-339-3046; jordan.hansen@heraldnet.com; X: @jordyhansen.
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