Today’s mail brings only 23 ballots

Another 182 votes were counted Monday from the Aug. 4 primary election as the number of ballots received slowed to a trickle.

Only 23 ballots were waiting at the post office Monday morning, a significant change from Friday, when there were closer to 800 on hand.

Monday’s trickle of ballots was about what had been expected by Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey and his elections staff. Under Washington’s election law, any ballot received with a postmark on or before Election Day is eligible to be counted. A change in postal rules — the postal service no longer delivers local first-class mail overnight — caused many of the ballots not to arrive until Friday, when they used to arrive on Wednesday or Thursday.

The latest tally does nothing to change who advances to the November general election, but it does call into question whether Marc Boldt or Mike Dalesandro will have the bragging rights in the race for county council chair. Boldt, a former Republican county commissioner running with no party preference, has consistently led all the vote tallies, but after Monday’s count, Democrat Dalesandro, a member of the Battle Ground City Council, is only 27 votes behind. Both will advance to the general election in November.

An unknown number of additional ballots will be counted between now and Aug. 18, when the election is due to be certified.

Most of the remaining 750 ballots on hand have been challenged for some reason. Ballots are challenged if, for example, the voter forgets to sign the envelope, or the signature doesn’t match the one on file. In cases where ballots are challenged, the elections office staff contacts the voters and invites them to come in and “cure” their ballots prior to the date the election is certified.

A little less than 26 percent of the county’s 250,728 registered voters cast ballots in the primary.