Recount of Aug. 3 primary election results confirms Yelm City Council winners

Yelm City Council candidate Steffen Burney will advance to the Nov. 2 general election to face Holly Smith as a result of a manual recount of primary results conducted Friday and certified by the Thurston County Canvassing Board.

Burney defeated Kayla Russell by one vote in the Position 4 primary contest. Burney received 257 votes and Russell received 256. Smith, the top vote-getter, received 457 votes. The primary narrows the field of candidates to two.

The hand recount results were the same as the earlier results.

“Only 1,066 voters of the 5,305 registered in Yelm took part in this election, and the margin of who is advancing to the general election is a single vote,” said Mary Hall, Thurston County Auditor, in a news release. “This is an example of how every vote really does matter.”

A three-person counting board hand tallied ballots in each of Yelm’s five precincts. Those totals were checked against machine counts by a two-person verification board. Both the counting and verification boards were staffed by full-time Elections Division workers.

A manual recount is required if the vote difference is less than 150 and less than a quarter of of 1%.

Four observers attended to watch the recounting process in person. All results of the Aug. 3 primary election are available at ThurstonVotes.org