Overview
- King County’s Tuesday update shows Wilson at 50.08% to Harrell’s 49.59%, a 1,346-vote edge after trailing by more than 10,000 on election night.
- King County Elections reports several thousand ballots left to process countywide, including about 1,700 Seattle ballots flagged for signature issues that voters can still cure.
- Under Washington law, an automatic machine recount is triggered if the margin is under 0.5% and fewer than 2,000 votes, with a hand recount under 0.25% and fewer than 1,000 votes.
- Analysts attribute Wilson’s late surge to Washington’s vote-by-mail pattern in which ballots returned on or near Election Day tend to skew more progressive.
- No recount can begin until after county certification on Nov. 24, and campaigns may request a recount by posting deposits of roughly $0.15 per ballot for a machine count or $0.25 for a hand count.