The razor-thin race for Washington’s commissioner of public lands presents an important opportunity for officials to demonstrate the integrity of our state’s election system.
As of Tuesday evening, Jaime Herrera Beutler held first place in the Aug. 6 primary election with 419,297 votes out of nearly 2 million cast in the race. But after that is when it gets interesting.
Dave Upthegrove had 396,300 votes; Sue Kuehl Pederson had 396, 249. With each candidate standing at 20.82 percent, the margin of 51 made a recount appear inevitable.
Washington, of course, has an open primary. Voters may support candidates from any political party, and the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election. With Herrera Beutler seemingly safe in first place, the race for second and third becomes paramount.
“Right now, it’s statistically unlikely that we wouldn’t be doing a manual recount,” state Director of Elections Stuart Holmes told The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review. “For simplicity’s sake, it’s essentially a hand count of the entire contest.”
Washington law mandates that elections with final vote margins smaller than one-quarter of a percent will be automatically recounted by hand. That happens at the county level, with each elections office retrieving all ballots from the primary and separating them by precinct.
The Spokesman reports: “Elections workers in teams of two will begin tallying, by hand, the results for the commissioner of public lands race. If the first hand count doesn’t match up with the originally reported count, elections workers will recount the pile by hand. If the second hand count does not match the first hand count, the election workers at hand will be excused and the pile of ballots will be counted by a separate team.”
Holmes said, “This is a historically close race, whether you’re looking at primaries or general elections.”
The last recount in a statewide election was 2004, when Democrat Chris Gregoire defeated Republican Dino Rossi for governor by 133 votes following two recounts. That election presaged claims of chicanery in recent elections; during the recount, more than 700 ballots that initially had been wrongly rejected in King County were allowed to be included. Rossi eventually conceded in June 2005.
Since then, faith in our elections has shriveled, undermined by Donald Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. There is no proof to support Trump’s claims, and those assertions have routinely been rejected by the courts. But his repeated lies have diminished our democracy.
A race for president of the United States or governor of Washington is certain to draw more public attention than a recount for second place in the primary for commissioner of public lands. But election transparency and integrity at all levels is essential for bolstering public faith in our democracy.
Meanwhile, the race also carries local interest with Herrera Beutler’s presence. The Republican, a former congresswoman, is trying to become the first person in decades to come from Clark County and be elected to statewide office.
If Upthegrove advances to the general election, Herrera Beutler will face an uphill battle in a statewide race against a Democrat; if Kuehl Pederson advances and two Republicans appear on the general ballot, Herrera Beutler’s chances will be greatly enhanced.
But political machinations are secondary. The most important thing is for a transparent system and a reliable recount that shows the integrity routinely demonstrated by election officials throughout Washington.
