The Washington state top-two primary held on August 2 resulted in a virtual tie between the second and third place candidates, in the Land Commissioner race. Only 51 votes separate the two candidates. The recount will start August 26 and is expected to be finished on September 3 or 4.
We all know what that recount will find… Washington is a heavy blue state. More than likely, Upthegrove, the Democrat candidate, will more than likely expand his lead.
Nine days? No reason to take that long, unless Democrat cheating is involved (which of course it is)
Just what does the Land Commissioner do?
LC – ONE MORE STATIST MONARCH IN A STATIST STATE REGIME
Washington appears to have standardized their processing as a result of the 2004 Gregoire-Rossi election. Undervotes, overvotes, and write-ins are verified as the votes are tabulated, with an image of the ballot projected on a video screen. Most undervotes are actually undervotes. Overvotes are pretty rare. Maybe someone made a mistake and tried to correct it. Perhaps voter intent can be determined by a human. Write-ins were 0.09% in this race.
I was watching the hand count in Cowlitz County (Longview). They had five two-person counting teams. They were handed a batch of a hundred ballots, which they sorted into 10 piles (7 candidates, and undervote, overvote, write-in?). One person appeared be reading the ballot, and the other would move the ballot into the correct stack. The two persons would then count the ballots in each stack, and probably checking that they were correctly placed. They would record their counts, and then an election official would come over and check that the two counts agreed (and probably compared with the machine count). At the rate they were counting, they will probably be done today or tomorrow.
The estimate of September 3 or 4, account for Labor Day, and that the Board of Canvassers in each county will probably wait a day to certify the results.
@WZ,
From Kitsap Sun:
“The lands commissioner leads the Department of Natural Resources and oversees nearly 6 million acres of state public land, including about 3 million acres of “trust lands” that produce revenue – mostly from logging – for schools, counties and other parts of government.
Lands the agency manages are also open to recreation and some generate revenue from activities like farming, aquaculture, and commercial real estate. The department has about 2,200 employees. And it’s the state’s lead wildland firefighting agency.”