Edmonds City Councilmember Lora Petso took a five-vote lead over challenger Darlene Stern in the latest Edmonds City Council election returns released at 5 p.m. Friday. In addition, incumbent Diane Buckshnis widened her margin to 135 votes over challenger Bob Wilcox and DJ Wilson edged closer to challenger Joan Bloom, with just 47 votes separating the two.
Of course, there are still more votes to be counted. The next update will be released at 6 p.m. Saturday.
Here’s a look at the latest numbers for Edmonds mayor and city council races, along with propositions that appeared before Edmonds voters Tuesday.
| CITY OF EDMONDS MAYOR |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| Dave Earling |
7,912 |
64.97% |
| Mike Cooper |
4,211 |
34.58% |
| Write-In |
54 |
0.44% |
| Total |
12,177 |
100.00% |
| CITY OF EDMONDS COUNCIL POS 4 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| Bob Wilcox |
5,782 |
49.22% |
| Diane Buckshnis |
5,917 |
50.37% |
| Write-In |
48 |
0.41% |
| Total |
11,747 |
100.00% |
| CITY OF EDMONDS COUNCIL POS 5 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| Joan Bloom |
5,688 |
50.04% |
| DJ Wilson |
5,641 |
49.63% |
| Write-In |
38 |
0.33% |
| Total |
11,367 |
100.00 |
| CITY OF EDMONDS COUNCIL POS 6 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| Frank Yamamoto |
7,586 |
68.67% |
| Alvin Rutledge |
3,426 |
31.01% |
| Write-In |
35 |
0.32% |
| Total |
11,047 |
100.00% |
| CITY OF EDMONDS COUNCIL POS 7 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| Darlene Stern |
5,569 |
49.82% |
| Lora Petso |
5,574 |
49.86% |
| Write-In |
36 |
0.32% |
| Total |
11,179 |
100.00% |
| City of Edmonds Prop 1 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| YES |
5,211 |
42.23% |
| NO |
7,130 |
57.77% |
| Total |
12,341 |
100.00% |
| City of Edmonds Prop 2 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| YES |
5,051 |
40.71% |
| NO |
7,355 |
59.29% |
| Total |
12,406 |
100.00% |
| City of Edmonds Prop 3 |
| 51/51 100.00% |
|
Vote Count |
Percent |
| YES |
4,637 |
37.37% |
| NO |
7,772 |
62.63% |
| Total |
12,409 |
100.00% |
My Edmonds News
Sign Up for Our Daily Edmonds Newsletter
The write in votes is an interesting concept. I have searched the Snoh County Election Site and could not find any information on write in votes for any recient elections with the exception of two citings. 1. A reference to a real person in the Gregiore/Rossi race and 2. A list of the “declaired” write in candidates in another past election along with ther votes they obtained.
What about the rest of the write in vote for elections like the current Edmonds Elections. For council the write ins are listed at 35, 36, 38, and 48 for the Wilcox/Buckshnis race. The write numbers increase as the total votes for the race increase.
Does anyone know how to find out who recieved the write in votes?
Ron W. you have made contacts with the elections office, could you check it out for the citizens?
Teresa, maybe a “press” request could get us the information?
In the 2009 Primary when I lost by 3 votes, increased to 7 after a recount, there were 141 write-in votes. My recollection is that they do not keep any information on the iden
tity of the write-ins. Actually, it would be pretty useless information.
I believe the reason they’re counting votes until 6 today is because they expect to have it wrapped up by then. Yesterday they counted a countywide total of 33,000 votes which brought the to-date total to about 163,000. On Thursday they reported they’d received 199,000, so they have 36,000 to count today. Next week they’ll count the few received since Thursday.
What may be interesting on the write in vote issue is to see if there is a pattern to the 30-40 per seat. Is anyone getting votes for each race or do we truely have a situation that each write in is getting only 1 or 2 votes or is someone getting a substantial number. The county must have to keep track of the information so why can’t we get it?
Perhaps you can get the info; email the county and ask them. Personally, I have no interest in knowing since if one person got all of the write-ins that still would only be less than 1% of the total.
But it could have been you!!!
There are two reasons I would not like the County to collect and post the write-in details when the total write-in count is less than the winner’s count:
(1) They would have to pay somebody to round up all the ballots with write-ins and manually enter them.
(2) It would encourage people to do pranks with the write-ins just to see the prank posted and possibly covered by the media.
Gary Haakenson emailed me this info, which I thought was interesting, and he said I could post it:
The Auditor does not keep track of who received write in votes. They only check them if there is a recount. It would be too time consuming to tally all write in votes.
By State law the Auditor must count votes without any day off as long as at the end of every day there are at least 500 uncounted ballots. So if at the end of the day today there are still 500 ballots to count then they will work tomorrow as well.
Thanks for the info Gary. As an example of a list of write in votes list link shows the people and things listed along with their vote count. It would appear Joe is correct in this assessment that people do take some creative licience in who they vote for. Giving them publicity beyond an election that requires a recount would bring out more of the same. One would expect a vote for none or a sports figure but for “Lance A Boil”???
See for yourself how some of used their voting priviledge. I guess that is what freedom is all about.
https://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/documents/Departments/Auditor/Elections/Results/General/RecountWriteIn.pdf
Snohomish County represents on its website that 16,641 Ballots have been returned. City of Edmonds Proposition 2 has received the most votes, 14,691. Using this total, one could guess there are 1,950 more ballots to be counted.
However, the Snohomish County Auditor website also indicates the following:
Please note that the Unofficial Election Results does not include counts where individuals did not vote in a race (undervote) or where individuals voted for more than one candidate (overvote). As a result, the number of ballots left to count in a particular race determined by comparing the Ballot Return Statistics to the Unofficial Election Results will be overestimated.
Now we’ve been told that by State law the Auditor must count votes without any day off as long as at the end of every day there are at least 500 uncounted ballots.
Since we do not get another update until Tuesday at 5:00 pm, is it correct to assume that due to undervotes and overvotes, we now have 500 or less uncounted ballots?
Snohomish County has updated the Ballot Return Totals by District as of Tuesday November 15, 2011 at 2:45 pm. The County now represents on its website that 16,820 Ballots have been returned in the City of Edmonds, 179 more than last reported.
City of Edmonds Proposition 2 has received the most votes, 15,103 . . . an increase of 412 votes since the last Unofficial Election results were released Saturday night the 12th. This 412 vote increase supports the concept that there were 500 or less uncounted ballots as of Saturday evening November 12th. This equals a maximum difference of 88 uncounted ballots.
Following this logic, does anyone else think we have 267 or less ballots left to count? My figure of 267 assumes there were 88 uncounted ballots left over from Saturday night and that none of the 179 additional ballots received by the County have been counted yet.
Snohomish County’s updated Ballot Return Totals by District spreadsheet also indicates that 201,701 Ballots have been Received by the County. The Unofficial Election results released last evening indicates that 194,041 have been counted to date. Is it possible that the great majority of the 7,660 difference are undervotes and overvotes . . .and that the number of ballots left to count is very small?
Would appreciate other’s thoughts on this.
Ken:
As best I can tell, your assessment of the situation is correct.. There’s very little left to be counted. As it stands, Position 7 will have the only recount – the difference is less than 0.5%.
Ken,
Your analysis is much more thorough than mine — if you see the canvass numbers from the previous count (https://www.snoco.org/elections/results/1111sov/178.htm – but you can look at any of the Edmonds results) 15,517 votes were counted. Using Prop 2 (once again you can use any Edmonds results), 94.67868% of voters voted in the Prop 2 race — if you divide the most recent count (15,103) by the previous percentage, you get 15,952 votes. It’s a very simple way to calculate that doesn’t take into consideration many aspects, but that’s what I came up with, and if it’s within the realm of accurate, there would be around 870 ballots to be counted.
Stohn:
Your analysis, of course, only applies to the propositions as fewer votes have been cast for the council positions.
Thanks Ron and Stohn,
I think we will know more later today, but it seems we are very close to knowing who the winners are.
Can either of you ever recall three Council races this tight in the past? It truly is amazing how close these three races are.
It is unfortunate anybody has to lose and I greatly respect all the candidates for their willingness to run for office and serve as Councilmembers.
Ron,
If you use the same method for all of the races (taking the percentage voting in those races from the previous count and dividing the current number by that percentage), you get with 20 or so votes of the number above.
Ken, the Orvis-Peterson race four years ago was pretty close, but not as close as Positions 5 and 7 this year!
Should’ve read “within 20 or so votes”
Thanks, Stohn; I’ll trust your analysis – for now..
Ken, I don’t know of any election in which there were 3 races so close. None were probably closer than my loss by 3 votes (7 after the hand recount) in the Primary 2 years ago.
Looks like 180-190 votes were counted today. Hard to be positive, but it seems like there must be only a small handful of ballots left to be counted….
Ron and Stohn – any thoughts?
Ken:
Yes; I believe that “the fat lady has sung”.