News - Elections

POSTED: Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

Ferndale City Council, Water District 13 races could require recounts

A Ferndale City Council race and a Water District 13 race could require recounts, according to the Monday, Nov. 9, election results.

Though the count is not yet final, candidates in both races are separated by only a handful of votes with likely all the ballots in the races counted.

In the race for Ferndale City Council Position 5, Jon Mutchler is only five votes ahead of Ken Downey.

The race for Water District 13 Commissioner Position 5 is separated by only three votes between leader Phil Cloward and Kaye Koenig.

The candidates must be separated by less than 1/2 of 1 percent to qualify for a machine recount, said Whatcom County Auditor Shirley Forslof. If the margins remain the same, both races qualify for a hand recount because candidates are separated by less than 1/4 of 1 percent, though the candidates could agree to a machine count instead.

If the races still qualify for a recount after the election is certified on Nov. 24, a time and date for that count will be set by the canvassing board. As of Monday, about 61,000 ballots were counted out of the nearly 61,600 that were returned. Some of the remaining ballots could be ineligible, but Forslof emphasized that in races this close, any additional votes could change the results.

"There will be more ballots counted," she said. "Now it could be a fairly small number, but when you're getting races this close, until every last eligible ballot is counted, that's when the determination is made."