The next batch of numbers in the mayor’s race will come in at 4:30 this afternoon. Right now, Mike McGinn has a 2,384-vote lead on Joe Mallahan, and has won an increasing margin of each successive batch of votes. According to the Mallahan campaign, Mallahan plans to wait to see if this afternoon’s drop brings him back within 2,000 votes of McGinn (“recount land”) before calling McGinn to concede.
Although some votes have been rejected because the signatures on the ballots don’t match those King County Elections has on file, Mallahan’s camp says he won’t contest those rejected votes. (Four thousand seven hundred signatures had been pulled as of Friday; I’ve got a call in to King County Elections to find out how many are still sitting in the reject pile).
UPDATE: Mallahan will make a statement at his headquarters after this afternoon’s drop. McGinn will await the results at his Southeast Seattle office and make a statement then.
Meanwhile, in other races you’ve stopped paying attention to: City Attorney-elect Pete Holmes continues to gain on incumbent Tom Carr in later votes, and now has 63 percent of the vote. City Council member Richard Conlin, meanwhile, is looking at his most successful election yet—so far, he has more than 77 percent of the vote against challenger David Ginsberg. Council member Nick Licata lost some vote share against challenger Jessie Israel, but still has more than 56 percen. Sally Bagshaw, with more than 69.5 percent, seems likely to top 70 in her race against fellow first-time candidate David Bloom for Position 4. And Position 8 candidate Mike O’Brien topped 57 percent in his race against three-time candidate Robert Rosencrantz. Finally, Proposition 1 (the housing levy) continued to close in on two-thirds of the vote, with slightly more than 65 percent at the last count.
