Barring a last-minute influx of votes tabulated for either candidate, the race for Position 2 on the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners appears headed for a runoff.
Updated results, released by the county clerk’s office late Wednesday afternoon, May 29, show that although challenger David “Bubba” King outdistanced incumbent Lindsay Berschauer by more than 1,245 votes, he did not reach the 50% threshold for winning the contest outright.
Of the 28,761 votes cast in the May primary election, King garnered 49.65% of the tally, meaning he failed to meet the state standard by 0.35 percentage points, or roughly 60 votes. Berschauer netted 45.31% (13,033 votes) in the race.
State law requires a candidate in a multi-person race to receive a minimum 50% plus one vote to avoid a runoff in the fall general election. Under state law, ballots postmarked by the May 21 election day will be accepted if they were received by the clerk’s office within seven days.
Yamhill County Clerk Keri Hinton said the results posted May 29 included ballots postmarked but not received by Election Day, as well as the ballots that needed to be “cured,” a term for challenged ballots that were resolved through May 28.
She further explained that the timeline for resolving challenged ballots through curing will continue until close of business on June 11. May 28 was the last day postmarked ballots were to be delivered by the postal system, she added.
The number of total votes in the race remains undecided, Hinton said.
“We still have more ballots to potentially be processed and official certified results will not be released until June 17 and until that date we will not have any final percentages or votes,” she said in an email.
However, she opined that it was unlikely there would be major shift in votes following the most recent count.
“Once we (posted) another round of unofficial results on May 29 there should not be as much of a potential for any significant changes to the vote tally, but there is still another two weeks for voters to resolve any ballot challenges including no signature and non-matching signature issues,” she said.
Exacerbating the uncertainty is the fact that 1,111 of the electorate failed to cast a vote for either King, Berschauer or David Wall in the commissioner race.
“Undervotes vary from election to election,” Hinton said. “It is not uncommon to see them ebb and flow.”
Initial results in the commissioner race had King winning by nearly 1,500 votes and earning roughly 50.5% percent of the tally. As more ballots trickled in, however, the percentage slowly decreased below the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff in the fall.
Should the results remain roughly the same, Berschauer and King would then begin anew their campaigns for the November general election.
“Once the official election results have been certified on June 17 it will determine the next steps and if a runoff will occur in the November general election or if one of the candidates won outright with 50% + 1 vote in the primary,” Hinton said.
Most Popular
Comments / 0