Elections, Mayor Harrell

Mayor Katie Wilson? It’s Sure Looking That Way!

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson edged above 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, in the final sizeable batch of ballots King County Elections expects to count. The 6,200 new ballots represent almost all of the 6,400 ballots that were still outstanding as of Monday, and Wilson received just over 60 percent of that batch, boosting her lead over Harrell to 1,346 votes, or 0.49 percent.

Those numbers are still within the margins that trigger an automatic machine recount, which is required when two candidates are less than 2,000 votes and less than half a percentage point apart.

This mayor’s race is the closest in modern history; you’d have to go back to 1906, when William Hickman Moore defeated Jonathan Riplinger by 15 votes, to find a closer race. That election isn’t really comparable, though; among other differences, women couldn’t vote, and the total number of votes was less than 17,000.

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“We want to wait until every vote has been counted, but we believe that we’ve won this race,” campaign manager Alex Gallo-Brown said. “We’re just inside the mandatory recount threshold, but as we continue to cure ballots with our huge turnout of volunteers, we’re hopeful that we can put the campaign behind us soon and focus on governing the city.” Campaigns “cure” ballots by reaching out to voters whose ballots have been challenged and making sure their signatures count.

“While not the direction we were hoping for, this remains a very close race, and we want to ensure every vote is counted,” a spokesperson for the Harrell campaign said. “We are grateful to our volunteers, who continue to reach out to voters, and will see how the final ballots are tallied.”
(Footnote: Today’s count showed fewer write-in ballots than yesterday’s. A spokesperson for King County Elections said this was because some people wrote one of the two candidates in instead of filling in the circle. “Our team actually reviews every write-in vote and if an actual candidate is written-in (on the line), that counts for the candidate’s total,” the spokesperson said. “A lot of that work happened today as part of regular quality control so that’s why you saw the write-ins go down and the candidate totals go up.”

 

6 thoughts on “Mayor Katie Wilson? It’s Sure Looking That Way!”

  1. Pingback: Wednesday Open Thread | HorsesAss.Org

  2. It does look like a possibly change in leadership. As I drove through Capitol hill grocery shoping with guards at the doors, south park and Gtown with campers and un-housed people, 12th and Jackson with its open drug market, i was struck by what a challenge our mayor, whomever prevails and the city and county government face. Neither winner with such a slight margin will have much of a mandate from the citizens to create unity. Just like the rest of the country. Such an opportunity for Seattle to lead by example, for the two factions to meet, listen and learn from each other to attempt to heal and move forward

    1. There really is a progressive mandate if you look at the other citywide races where centrists got blown out of the water. Bruce had to do a complete post-primary makeover as a “progressive changemaker” to even be competitive with Katie, which tells us even he knows that Seattle voters are favoring progressive candidates and progressive solutions to tackle Seattle’s problems.

  3. After years of Harrell’s “leadership” (and the malignant influence of the cancerous Tims), I’m delighted that we’re very likely to be rid of him.

    Harrell can spend more time with his family (at least those he doesn’t ignore) while enjoying his retirement. I look forward to Wilson sacking Harrell’s godawful appointees.

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