Lacey City Council race is oh-so-close, but it’s not headed to a recount just yet
The Lacey City Council Position No. 3 race between incumbent Lynda Zeman and Realtor Ed Kunkel Jr. is very close, but it’s not so close that it will trigger a machine recount. At least not yet.
A machine recount is triggered when a race between two candidates meets not one, but two requirements, according to the Thurston County Auditor’s Office: a vote difference of less than 2,000 votes and a percentage difference of less than one-half of 1 percent, Auditor’s Office information shows.
Zeman and Kunkel meet the first requirement because as of early Thursday, Kunkel led Zeman by 83 votes, with Kunkel at 5,472 and Zeman at 5,389. But on a percentage basis, they were at about three-quarters of 1 percent, Auditor Mary Hall said Thursday.
And that likely isn’t going to change, she said.
When there’s a flip in a race — when one candidate overtakes another in vote count — that typically happens when election officials are still counting the bulk of the ballots. Kunkel has led Zeman since election night, but Zeman has closed the gap.
“It’s rare for a flip at this stage,” Hall said. “It’s not impossible, but rare.”
Hall said her office is in the ballot duplication phase, which means they are duplicating and counting ballots because of the following: the voter made a correction, there is a stray pen mark on the ballot, or the ballot arrived damaged.
Duplicating ballots is a slow process, Hall said, and as of Thursday evening, they still had 5,000 ballots to count. They already have counted more than 76,000 ballots countywide.
The Olympian could not reach Zeman or Kunkel for comment.
The Yelm City Council race between Position No. 1 candidates Ej Curry and James Blair is also very close. Blair is leading Curry by 31 votes, but it’s also not in machine recount territory either because on a percentage basis they are separated by 2.3 percentage points. Blair has 689 voters compared to Curry’s 658.
If there is a recount, it would take place the first week of December, Hall said.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 3:31 PM.
