PORT ANGELES — Navarra Carr now leads Nina Napiontek for Position 6 on the Port Angeles City Council and if the margin stays as it is now, after Wednesday’s count of general election ballots, the race results will trigger a mandatory recount.
Carr’s newest tally is 2,516 votes, or 49.84 percent, while Napiontek’s is 2,512 votes, or 49.72 percent.
Napiontek led by two votes after Tuesday’s count and had been slightly ahead for most of the counts of ballots from the Nov. 5 election.
The close race could trigger a mandatory machine recount if the margins do not change by certification Nov. 26.
A mandatory machine recount for non-statewide races is required when the difference between candidates is less than 2,000 and also less than one-half of 1 percent of the total number of votes cast for both candidates, according to the Washington Secretary of State.
The Auditor’s Office counted 291 ballots on Wednesday, with 46 still on hand. Those are to be counted today, said Auditor Shoona Riggs.
The remaining ballots are mostly duplicated ballots made because of damage or crossed out answers. The ballots answers are copied from the original ballot to a clean one, matching notated numbers, by a team of two, and after the ballots are copied, an additional two people audit the work of the first team to guarantee accuracy.
The voter turnout in Clallam County is 51.86 percent, with 27,948 ballots cast out of the 53,887 provided registered voters.
In another close race, Greg Bellamy Sr. pulled ahead of appointee Karin Ashton with 125 votes to her 121 votes for a seat on the Clallam Bay Fire District commission after Wednesday’s count, the seventh undertaken by the Clallam County Auditor’s Office since Election Day. He now is ahead by four votes, with the percentages being 50.40 and 48.79, not within the state mandated recount range.
Outcomes in other races in Clallam County remained the same after today’s count.
State law requires daily counts of ballots in counties with populations of more than 75,000. The U.S. Census Bureau released an estimate of 76,737 people living in Clallam County as of July 1, 2018.
A count was conducted Saturday because the office was closed Monday for Veterans Day, she said.
In races shared by voters in both Clallam and Jefferson counties:
• Challenger William “Bill” Miano won the Fire District 3’s Position 3 seat over incumbent James Barnfather.
• Jim Stoffer won the Sequim School Board District 3 seat against Beth Smithson.
• Steve Hopf won the county Fire District 2, Position 3 seat against Keith Cortner.
• Fire District 3’s proposition to renew an emergency medical services levy passed.