Clark County recount underway in Senate race; GOP lawsuit already filed

Clark County recount begins for Senate race amid GOP legal challenge over voter rolls.

The WSRP has already filed a legal challenge disputing the results of the initial count and asking Clark County to hold the recount until a judge weighs in

Carleen Johnson
The Center Square Washington

Clark County election officials expect to finish a machine recount late Monday in the Legislative District 18 Senate contest between Republican candidate Brad Benton and Democrat challenger Adrian Cortes.

Out of 84,123 votes in the race, Cortes was leading Benton by 172 votes when the secretary of state certified election results on Dec. 5, triggering a machine recount.

The Washington State Republican Party has already filed a legal challenge disputing the results of the initial count and asking Clark County to hold the recount until a judge weighs in.

The lawsuit filed Friday in Clark County Superior Court alleges election officials failed to update databases of registered voters in District 18 and that more than 1,000 votes counted in the race were from voters who did not reside in the district.

“We requested from the United States Postal Service their national change of address database information,” Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh during a Monday phone interview with The Center Square. “We asked specifically for information from voters in the 18th district in Clark County who moved away either out of the district or out of the state entirely.”

Walsh said USPS responded with numbers that throw the Senate contest into question.

“The postal service got back to us and there were between a thousand and 1,200 people who had moved out of the 18th district, who voted in the election,” said Walsh. “That is wrong, and frankly that is illegal.”

The lawsuit filed in Clark County Superior Court does not name any voters but rather accuses Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey and the elections office of failing to keep an updated database of eligible voters.

“We’re not interested in prosecuting individual voters; we’re interested in finding out why election officials aren’t doing their job and removing these people from the voter rolls because election officials shouldn’t be sending ballots to people who don’t live in the district anymore,” Walsh noted. “It’s a recipe for abuse and untrustworthy election results.”

Walsh said the state GOP’s lawsuit requested Clark County hold off on the machine recount until the court weighed in, but Kimsey told The Center Square Monday morning they were getting underway with the recount.

“The way a machine recount is administered is we start by identifying all the ballots in the race that were undervotes and then humans examine each of those ballots and determine if the voter’s intent was properly recorded,” Kimsey said.

“An undervote is where the voter makes no choice in that race,” he explained.

In Legislative District 18, there were 4,753 undervotes, according to the Clark County Auditor election results page.

Clark County election workers also conducted a machine recount in the County Council District No. 4 contest between Vancouver resident Joe Zimmerman and Camas resident Matt Little.

After the initial count, Little was leading Zimmerman by the slimmest of margins, and after the recount was finished last Friday, nothing changed.

“That race was separated by only 49 votes and the recount resulted in no change at all in those votes,” Kimsey said.

“Recounts are the best test of the integrity of the election administration process,” he said, adding his office expected to finish the state senate recount Monday afternoon, but the pending legal challenge could delay certification.

In the race between Little and Zimmerman, there were 11,587 undervotes – that is, voters chose not to select a candidate.

Walsh said the issue of voters casting ballots in districts they no longer reside is a much larger issue than just Clark County.

“The truth is this practice probably applies to other counties, and I think it’s very likely a statewide issue, but right now this is the clear case for this problem,” Walsh said.

He went on to say county auditors are required to update their voter databases regularly, but state law does not specify how they do this or how often they must do it.

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.