The same candidates who pulled ahead on Election Day held onto their leads Wednesday as the Clark County Elections Office tallied additional ballots, further securing their place in November’s general election.
In the Vancouver mayoral race, incumbent Anne McEnerny-Ogle will advance to the general with 68.76 percent. Challenger Earl Bowerman (18.12 percent) is holding onto his edge over Doug Coop (13.12 percent) and remains on track to appear on the November ballot alongside McEnerny-Ogle.
In the open Vancouver City Council Position 1 race, Kim Harless (37.52 percent) and John Blom (26.04 percent) held onto their leads over Mike Pond and Justin Forsman. The same held true for incumbent Erik Paulsen (76.66 percent) and challenger Kara Tess (13.08 percent) seeking the Position 2 seat, and Diana Perez (51.4 percent) and David Gellatly (26.08 percent) in the race for the open Position 3 seat.
In La Center, a pair of city council seats will be decided by smaller margins. Wednesday’s update on the Position 1 city council race shows Justin Keeler and Melissa Fox on track to advance with 30.42 percent and 25.78 percent, respectively, but Myrna Leija trails just 10 ballots behind Fox. For Position 3, T.R. Williams (36.89 percent) and Janice Fowler (31.56 percent) are ahead, but Sean Boyle falls just 28 votes behind Fowler.
For the Vancouver school board, Position 2 incumbent Sandra Zavala-Ortega is widening her narrow lead over challenger Michelle Belkot; she’s up by 242 ballots, compared with just 64 on election night. Both candidates remain on track to advance. The Evergreen school district race will come down between Julie Bocanegra and Mike Appel.
Across Clark County’s school districts, the election night status quo prevailed, with minor tweaks in voter tallies hardly making a dent in races with big margins. In Battle Ground, Mary Snitily and Chloe Seppala remain on track to advance for the District 1 seat, while Ted Champine and Diane Langan will vie for District 3.
Funding for a special EMS district that serves Yacolt and north Clark County is still falling short of the number of votes needed to pass, despite a strong showing of support among voters who did participate; 86.61 percent of Yacolt voters and 79.13 percent of unincorporated Clark County voters are in favor of implementing the $1.10 per $1,000 property tax levy.
Although it moved closer to passage, the levy still needs 29 yay votes in Yacolt to pass. Among unincorporated voters, the levy passed the threshold of needed votes between Tuesday and Wednesday, with 2,354.
The Clark County Elections Office posted its first update to the preliminary results at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday.
As of that time, the elections office had tallied a total of 61,685 ballots, bringing the county’s voter participation rate to 20.66 percent. Elections officials will continue to tally more ballots over the coming days until the results are certified on Aug. 17.
