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News / Politics / Clark County Politics

Two races head to recounts after Clark County election results certified

18th District Senate seat, county council District 4 to be decided

By Shari Phiel, Columbian staff writer
Published: November 27, 2024, 5:20pm
Updated: November 27, 2024, 5:21pm

Results for the Nov. 5 general election were certified Tuesday. While there were plenty of close races, two will require recounts.

In the race between Brad Benton and Adrian Cortes for the 18th Legislative District Senate seat, the final tally showed Cortes with 42,053 votes (49.99 percent) to Benton’s 41,881 votes (49.79 percent), a difference of 172 votes.

Cathie Garber, Clark County elections supervisor, said the race did not qualify for a manual recount but did qualify for a machine recount, which will occur 8 a.m. Dec. 9.

“We expect it will take us two days to complete that recount,” Garber said Wednesday.

Under state law, non-statewide races have a mandatory machine recount if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 2,000 votes and also less than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes cast for both candidates.

A mandatory manual recount is required if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 150 votes and also less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the total votes.

The other race qualifying for a recount is the Clark County Council District 4 race between Joe Zimmerman and Matt Little.

The final tally gave Little 23,765 votes (49.66 percent) and Zimmerman 23,716 votes (49.56 percent). That’s a difference of just 49 votes.

Garber said the outcome was within the threshold for a manual recount, but both candidates, in writing, requested for an alternative method and requested it to be a machine recount.

Not only do manual recounts take more time to complete, they are more expensive. Garber said doing a machine recount rather than manual recount would save taxpayers around $50,000.

Garber said she expects the recount for Clark County Council District 4 will begin at 8 a.m. Wednesday and be completed by Friday. Once the recounts are completed, results will be posted on Clark County’s elections website.

What does a machine recount entail? Garber said elections staff will review all the ballots in each district that were recorded as an undervote, meaning no selection was made. The ballots will be screened to determine if any of those undervotes should have been attributed to a specific candidate.

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“We will be sending notification to the candidates today, letting them know the date of the recount. The candidates can be present, along with their counsel, and they can also have representation in the room, along with observers witnessing the machine recount,” Garber said.

A manual recount is far more labor intensive and can take two weeks or longer to complete.

Although Secretary of State Steve Hobbs will certify statewide election results on Wednesday, Garber said the county can file an amended election abstract if any undervotes are attributed to one of the candidates.

The county elections received a bit of a surprise late Monday when the Benton campaign and others arrived with 420 ballot signature forms to be processed.

“That is not usual at all. It actually took us quite by surprise,” Garber said.

Each election, hundreds of ballots are rejected for missing signatures, signatures that don’t match the signature on file, and other reasons. Challenged ballots can be corrected but must be turned in by 5 p.m. the day prior to certification. For the 2024 general election, that deadline was Monday.

“This is a very labor-intensive process where we must look up each person and we put a label on it to make sure that we’re either accepting the right person’s ballot or leaving it as challenged,” Garber said. “It took us approximately 4.5 hours to complete.”

Although Benton publicly conceded the race in a Nov. 14 Facebook post, he and his campaign continued to work on correcting rejected ballots, likely in hopes of changing the outcome. It’s not an unusual strategy for campaigns when races are this close.

Of the forms submitted Monday, 55 were rejected again due to the signature. Another 102 had already been corrected by the voter. Garber said her main concern was that some of the forms had been signed just a few days after the election but weren’t turned in.

“If we had received them in a timely manner, and we would have still left them as challenged, that voter would have been notified by us again,” she said.

Cortes said he learned the Benton campaign was working to correct, or cure, rejected ballots around that same time.

“Early on after he conceded, probably a day after that, we learned he was engaging in that strategy, trying to get us to back off as they would continue to work behind the scenes on ballot curing. So our team ballot cured all the way to the very end,” Cortes said Wednesday.

Benton could not be reached for comment.

Cortes said he is confident in the recount process and that the election outcome will remain unchanged. However, he said he was concerned about a bigger issue, which is the potential misuse of sensitive voter information by third parties, including candidates and their campaign staff

“It may be a loophole in the law that needs to looked at,” Cortes said. “These (signature forms) have sensitive information from individuals … and they’re collecting all this information and harvesting it.”

When a ballot is rejected, the elections office will notify the voter and send a missing signature form or signature update form, if requested. Both forms include the voter’s first, middle and last names, date of birth and phone number. Both forms must be signed by the voter or by two witnesses if the voter is unable to sign.

Cortes also said there’s no way to know if third parties harvesting ballot-curing forms are turning in every form collected or weeding out votes they don’t want counted.

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