Washington Lands Commissioner primary race heads toward a recount

(The Center Square) – With fewer than 270 votes separating candidates in the second spot for Washington Commissioner of Public Lands, it appears a recount will be required.

As of Monday afternoon, 267 votes separate Democratic candidate and King County Council President Dave Upthegrove from Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson.

That gives Upthegrove 20.83% of the overall votes, with Kuehl Pederson holding 20.82% of the total vote. 

Kuehl Pederson told The Center Square she expects the SOS announcement on a potential recount to come on Tuesday, adding if the final votes to be added trend the way they have been in recent days, it will be close enough to trigger a manual recount of the ballots.

The second-place finisher will compete in the November election against former Jaime Herrera Beutler, a former Republican member of Congress, who currently has 417,930 votes, or 22.02%. 

In an interview with The Center Square, Herrera Beutler said she understands earning the votes of those who did support her in the primary will be a challenge.

“To pull this off, it’s not going to be a small thing as there is not an elected Republican in statewide office, not just in Washington, but in Oregon and California too,” she said.

“It’s not a small thing to ask citizens to support me, including those who are not from my party,” she continued. “But I think I’m the right candidate to do this, as I have a record of strong bipartisanship in problem solving, so we’ll see.”

If Pederson finishes in second place, no Democrat will appear on the November ballot in the race for lands commissioner.

Five Democrats ran in the primary which splintered the Democratic vote.

On Monday, SOS Elections Director Stuart Holmes told The Center Square it’s been decades since a statewide race in a primary was this close.

“It’s been many years since we had a statewide recount,” Holmes said. “The closest race in a primary goes all the way back to 1960 and in 2004 we had the closest gubernatorial election in history.”

Holmes added that it's going to be hard for election administrators to predict exactly how long a recount will take. The super-close margin in the race points to why every election is important, according to Holmes. 

“Turn out for this primary is less than 41% of registered voters casting a ballot and it’s going to come down to a handful of them separating the candidates and determining who goes onto the general election,” he said.

Next, Holmes said Counties will certify their election results on Tuesday, then the results will be consolidated into a statewide database.

“Once we certify primary results no later than Friday, but potentially sooner, we’ll have a good idea if there’s a recount, which we expect there to be, and then we will direct the county canvassing boards to recount ballots using the required method," he said.

In the meantime, both Pederson’s campaign and Upthegrove’s campaign have been contacting voters whose ballots were challenged, to make sure they get every single vote before certification.

Often times ballots are challenged because a signature has changed from what SOS has on record, or the mailing envelope was not signed. 

“The deadline for ‘curing’ those ballots is today,” said Holmes.

A manual, or hand recount is triggered if the difference is less than 1,000 votes and under 0.25% of the total votes cast for both of the candidates.

At this point, the vote total difference would trigger a hand recount.