Race is on to complete hand recount in WA lands commissioner primary race

(The Center Square) – A hand recount in the primary race for commissioner of public lands is underway Monday to determine who will earn the second spot to advance to November's general election to face first-place finisher Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler.

When county election officials finished counting ballots last week, and the Aug. 6 primary was certified by the Secretary of State’s office, Democrat Dave Upthegrove held a razor-thin lead of 51 votes over Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson.

The .002% margin automatically triggered a hand recount, which is conducted in each county, where election observers will be closely watching.

“It’s a significant undertaking for the campaign and we’ve brought on legal help and additional staff to help oversee hundreds of volunteers to observe and flag anything that might be an issue for us to deal with,” said Sandeep Kaushik with the Upthegrove campaign.

“It’s a big lift that will take a week or more and will take an enormous amount of resources," Kaushik noted.

As previously reported by The Center Square, there is pressure on county election officials to hurry the recount along, with the looming deadline to have ballots printed, as well as voter pamphlets to be sent to members of the military and other overseas voters.

“Military ballots that have to be out the door by September 21st,” said Stuart Holmes, elections division director at the Secretary of State's Office.

Counting ballots by hand, rather than machine, is a time-consuming endeavor.

King County, the largest county in the state, must count more than 559,000 ballots by hand. It could have been a much larger task, but for the fact voter turnout in King County was at just over 40%.

“You’re allowed to have observers watch the count,” Kaushik explained. “They’ll take stacks of ballots and multiple people handle each stack, and if there’s any discrepancies, that is what we’ll be watching out for.”

Kuehl Pederson tells The Center Square she's hearing the recount could be finished later this week.

"It's happening lightning fast and could be done by Thursday," said Kuehl Pederson. "Many of the smaller counties could just take a day and we've been scrambling to get observers in every county so that's quite a task."

The candidate says the state Republican party has been very helpful in providing observers and training for the recount, but she's relying on volunteers for the most part.

"We have the most wonderful volunteers and everyone has just been showing up, I'm not paying them," she said. "They are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and their patriotism."

Kaushik said while they have a large legal team taking part in observations, they aren’t anticipating an outcome that would prompt a legal challenge.

“We just want eyes on the process to make sure it’s all going smoothly and there’s nothing of concern from our perspective, so that’s why we’ve got experienced legal advisors to help guide us," he said.

It was 20 years ago Washington saw the last hand recount between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi for governor.

Rossi was declared the winner in the initial automated count and again in a subsequent automated recount, but after a second recount done by hand, Gregoire took the lead by a margin of 129 votes.

Rossi’s legal challenge was denied by a judge in Chelan County on June 6, 2005.

“In all the years I’ve been doing campaigns, I’ve never seen one this close,” said Kaushik.

The campaign started sending out emails last week to recruit volunteers and ask for contributions to cover legal expenses tied to the recount, much like staff members did in the last two weeks to "cure' ballots that had been set aside and not counted often times because of signature issues, or unsigned envelopes.

“For that process, we had more than 350 volunteers that actively made phone calls or knocked on doors, something like 10,000 phone calls and more than 2,500 door knocks and we think that’s what made the difference,” said Kaushik, who told The Center Square the campaign is confident Upthegrove will advance to the general election.

County election offices are estimating the recount will take seven business days to complete.

The Center Square did reach out to Kuehl Pederson but did not receive a response in time for publication.