Port of Port Angeles commission candidates John Calhoun and Brad Collins remain headed for a manual recount after a fourth round of votes from last week’s general election were counted Tuesday.
After the Clallam County Auditor’s Office counted 101 more ballots, Calhoun — the incumbent and president of the three-person commission — increased his lead from nine votes to 17.
Calhoun, 65, has 9,268 votes, or 50.05 percent, while Collins, 61, has 9,251 votes, or 49.95 percent.
To date, 25,619 ballots out of the 45,739 mailed have been counted.
Voter turnout sits at 56 percent.
But actual participation in the countywide commission race is less.
A total of 7,090 ballots — or nearly 28 percent of those returned — did not include votes for either Calhoun or Collins.
Other ballots
The only other ballots that will be counted are any that come in from overseas — likely from military personnel — that were postmarked no later than Nov. 3, and the ballots — totalling 133 — that were returned without a signature or with a signature that didn’t match the state’s records.
The ballots with signature problems can be counted only if they are corrected no later than Nov. 23 — the day before the election is certified — by the voters who submitted them.
Collins, deputy director of resource development for the Serenity House of Clallam County and a former Port Angeles city community development director, said he would encourage each of those voters to correct their ballots, but he added that he has no plans to call them individually as Edna Petersen’s campaign is doing in her too-close-to-call Port Angeles City Council race with Max Mania.
“Every vote counts, and it’s no more clear than in an election like this,” Collins said.
Other than port race and the Port Angeles council race, no other contests in Clallam County saw substantial changes after Tuesday’s count.
Recount
A race that ends within a quarter of a percentage point goes to an automatic hand recount, while any race that ends with less than a half of a percentage-point difference goes to an automatic machine recount, said David Ammons, spokesman for the state Secretary of State.
The certification date, Nov. 24, is when the three-member Clallam County Canvassing Board will schedule a recount.
Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand, who sits on the board with county commission Chairman Mike Doherty and county Prosecutor Deb Kelly, said a manual recount will likely take about four days.
The county uses a machine to tally votes, and candidates can opt for the device to recount the ballots.
Calhoun, who is commission president, said he would prefer a machine recount because it would be less costly and time-consuming for the county.
“I would think that the machine count would be far more accurate,” he added.
For the race to have a machine recount, both candidates would have to agree to it, and Collins said he remains undecided.
Before Monday’s ballot count, when a surge of Forks-West End votes were counted, Collins, who lives in Port Angeles, had been ahead of Calhoun, who lives in Forks, by 196 votes, based on Friday’s round of tallying ballots.
Calhoun confident
Calhoun said he is feeling fairly confident that he will come out on top after a recount
“It’s been an up-and-down situation,” he said. “I was not encouraged after the 196-vote loss.
“I think it’s quite remarkable that margin has changed . . . so actually, I feel pretty comfortable in the actual outcome.”
Whoever wins will serve a six-year term on the three-member commission.
Rosand said the last hand recount involving a local race took place in 1990.
It was between Democrat Evan Jones of Sequim and Republican Ann Goos of Forks who finished within five votes of each other.
Goos was challenging Jones for his seat in the state Legislature.
The race, said Rosand, became known as the “race from hell” after several ballots were found unopened in Clallam, Jefferson and Grays Harbor counties after the votes were already tallied.
“Needless to say, our procedures have [improved] drastically since then,” she said.
Jones was victorious in that race.
Click on http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/CLALLAM/ELECTIONS/Pages/ElectionResults.aspx for full election results.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.