Soap Lake recount a time-consuming endeavor

EPHRATA — “In batch four, there are five,” said Grant County Election Administrator Dedra Olson.

It’s Tuesday morning at the Grant County Courthouse, and Olson pulls out a stack of 100 ballots and sets them down on a table in the county elections office.

Fellow Election Administrator Michele Blondin pulls on a pair of purple medical gloves and begins flipping through the ballots, looking for the five ballots from precincts 47 and 52 that were cast in the recent election for Soap Lake City Council Position No. 7.

“That’s one,” she said as she hands a ballot to Grant County Auditor Michele Jaderlund, who oversees the county’s election. Jaderlund then adds the ballot to a slowly growing stack in a basket.

They are looking for 383 ballots out of 17,615 cast countywide. And they have to go through all of those ballots until they find what they need because the ballots are organized and stored in the order they were received — either by mail or at drop-off boxes — and not by city or precinct.

“There are 12 boxes of ballots for the entire county,” Olson said. “In this box there are 16 batches of 100 votes each.”

It’s a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. But it’s all part of the recount that Judith Gorman, who challenged long-time incumbent Councilmember JoAnn Rushton for position No. 7 on the Soap Lake City Council and who fell two votes short when the election was certified 190-188 (with five write-in votes) in favor of Rushton last week.

“I’m so glad we have paper ballots,” Gorman said as she watched it all.

This isn’t the first recount this election season for the County Auditor’s office. Last Tuesday, the final vote for mayor of George was certified tied at 28-28 for candidates Don Entzel and Gerene Nelson. A hand recount found the vote still even, so the election was settled according to Washington state law — with a coin toss.

Don Entzel won.

Gorman, who started going to Soap Lake city council meetings before she and her husband retired and permanently settled there, will continue to remain involved in city affairs even if the recount confirms Ruston’s victory.

“It’s better than TV,” she said. “Our city council meetings are very vibrant.”

Washington state law mandates a machine recount if the difference in the final tally is 2,000 votes or less and less than one-half of 1 percent, and a hand recount if the certified vote difference is 150 votes or less and one-quarter of 1 percent. In the case of Soap Lake City Council Position No. 7, the difference is .51 percent, just above the threshold.

So she has to pay for the recount — at 15 cents per ballot.

“The candidate who requests it pays for it, but they hold the check,” Gorman said. “If the count is the same, if they haven’t made any mistakes, then they keep my check. But it the count is different, I get my money back.”

“Either way, it’s a good process to engage in,” Gorman said. “I requested the recount because it was so close, We really needed to know.”

An hour of hunting for ballots, however, can make even the sharpest public official start to wonder what they are looking at and need a break.

“Is that a 52 or a 32?” asked County Commissioner Cindy Carter, who was overseeing the recount.

“You see the numbers and then go, ‘oh wait…’” added Jaderlund.

Which is why there are two election administrators and two elected officials overseeing the recount — to make sure there are many eyes reviewing things, to make sure no ballot escapes notice. That also means it’s slow going, and as of press time Monday, county election officials were not finished recounting ballots in the Soap Lake race.

However, Gorman’s faith in the process is firmer than ever.

“I’m just impressed with the election office here, it’s been very good,” she said. “Voting is so important to us. Wise, intelligent, factual-based voting.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.