PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County Auditor’s Office counted 90 late-arriving ballots Thursday in the fifth count of the primary election.
No primary races flipped Thursday when the additional ballots were tabulated in the all-mail election.
The Aug. 6 primary election — which determines the top two vote-getters who will advance to the general election — will be certified in a Canvassing Board meeting Tuesday.
The Canvassing Board also will meet in a pre-certification meeting Monday.
Both meetings will begin at 1 p.m. in the Election Center in the basement of the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
The next ballot count will be on Monday, Clallam County Elections Manager Becky Pettigrew said Thursday.
“We’re caught up and so this will be the last count for this week,” Pettigrew said in a Thursday email.
“What will be left to count on Monday before the Canvassing Board meeting will be anything else that was mailed by Election Day but took a while to get to us (such as from our military and overseas voters), along with any more ballots that had been challenged (such as for the voter forgetting to sign their ballot) but that were later ‘cured’ by the voter submitting a signed form to us.”
The top-two vote-getters in the primary advance to the Nov. 5 general election.
In the closest primary contest, Brendan Meyer defeated former Port Angeles resident Tara Martin Lopez by 17 votes in the race for second place for Port Angeles City Council Position 7.
Martha Cunningham won the most votes: 1,222. Meyer had 917 votes and Lopez had 900.
Meyer and Lopez were separated by 14 votes after the fourth count last Friday.
Lopez moved to New Mexico to pursue a job opportunity last month after her name was affixed to the primary ballot.
As of Thursday, Meyer and Lopez were separated by 0.94 percent of the votes cast in their head-to-head matchup.
State law requires an automatic recount if two candidates are separated by less than 0.5 percent, County Auditor Shoona Riggs has said.
Here is where the other Clallam County races stood after Thursday’s tabulation.
• Charlie McCaughan and Doc Robinson advanced to the general election in the race for Port Angeles City Council Position 5.
McCaughan had 1,565 votes, Robinson had 850 votes and Artur Wojnowski had 645 votes.
• Mike Gilstrap and Danny Smith will vie for Forks City Council Position 5.
Gilstrap had 207 votes, Smith had 155 votes and Christina Kohout had 53 votes.
• Ann Marie Henninger and Nate Adkisson were leading Warren Pierce in the race for a Sequim-area Olympic Medical Center commissioner seat.
Henninger had 8,340 votes, Adkisson had 3,328 votes and Pierce had 2,526 votes.
• Steve Hopf and Keith Cortner will be on the general election ballot in the race for Clallam County Fire District No. 2 commissioner.
Hopf had 986 votes, Cortner had 409 votes and Richard Ruud had 221 votes.
• In a beauty race for the Sequim-area District 1 Clallam County commission seat, Mark Ozias, a Democrat, defeated Republican challenger Brandon Janisse 5,217 votes to 3,332 votes.
Ozias and Janisse each advanced to the general election.
Partisan races must be included on the top-two primary ballots even if only two candidates have filed.
Ozias’s primary victory means his name will appear first on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Countywide voter turnout was 30.81 percent as of Thursday.
The Auditor’s Office had received 15,702 of the 50,956 ballots mailed to registered voters.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at [email protected] dailynews.com.
