Close Plinski-Morris race triggers recount

In one of the closest election races in recent local history, only two votes separate Washougal City Council candidates Caryn Plinski and incumbent Rod Morris for the Position 2 seat.

According to Clark County Elections Supervisor Tim Likness, although there are still a total of about 1,000 votes to tally for all of Clark County, he expects the Washougal race to qualify for an automatic recount, which happens when the number of votes separating candidates is less than one-half of one percent.

“Normally there is a pattern with election results, but when you get down to just a small number of ballots, you don’t see that pattern anymore,” he said. “It’s unpredictable. But it is looking like this one is within the range where there is a strong possibility of an automatic recount.”

If this proves true, Likness said first all Clark County election results will be certified on Nov. 29, then official letters will go out to the two candidates involved in the recount, and finally the task of manually tabulating the approximately 3,000 ballots would be conducted on Monday, Dec. 5.

“It will take about half a day to sort the ballots, and half a day to do the recount,” he said.

Likness added that candidates with results outside of the automatic recount threshold can request a recount, but it must be paid for by the candidate at a rate of 25 cents per ballot.

In other local election results, come Jan. 1 it looks like there will be a couple of changes to the makeup of the Washougal City Council. Incumbent Molly Coston lost to Connie Jo Freeman by 153 votes and Joyce Lindsay won convincingly against incumbent Michael Delavar with 53.19 percent of the votes. The only incumbent to defeat her opponent without question was Jennifer McDaniel who won her re-election bid by 55.84 percent.

In Camas, incumbent Mayor Scott Higgins earned 81.72 percent of the vote in a lopsided win against fired city employee Ken Kakuk, and incumbent Shannon Turk captured the City Council Ward 3 seat against Margaret Tweet with 59 percent of the vote.

With 90.81 percent of the vote, Camas City Council Ward 2 incumbent Linda Dietzman had no problem defeating last minute write-in challenger Steve Bang. Currently the race includes 344 write-in votes. Likness said those ballots would be counted individually this week.