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Leads stay the same in 2 tight contests

Races for county seat, 17th House post don't have clear winner yet

By Craig Brown, Columbian Editor
Published: November 9, 2016, 7:38pm

Clark County elections workers tabulated another 14,571 ballots Wednesday, but at the end of the day there were no changes in the lead for two tight local races.

In the race for an open Clark County council seat, Republican John Blom more than doubled his lead on Democrat Tanisha Harris and now is ahead by 434 votes out of 38,163 counted. The winner will take Republican David Madore’s seat and represent the eastern portion of Vancouver on the five-member county governing body.

The other tight race is for 17th District House of Representatives, Position 1. In that race Republican Vicki Kraft leads independent Democrat Sam Kim by 888 votes out of 51,237 ballots counted. That’s about 1 percentage point, a slightly bigger margin than on Tuesday. The two are vying for Republican Lynda Wilson’s seat; she ran for the 17th District Senate seat and holds a lead of nearly 9 percentage points in that race over Democrat Tim Probst.

In other updated Clark County results, Hillary Clinton has received about 3,000 more votes than Donald Trump, 46.12 percent to 44.25 percent. However, among the 167,547 local votes counted in the race thus far, there were 5,426 write-ins and almost 10,000 third-party votes. Four years ago, the local contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney attracted only 1,371 write-ins and less than 5,000 third-party votes.

Overall, this year’s general election favored Republicans and incumbents. Republicans won 12 of 15 seats spanning five legislative districts covering all or part of Clark County, and all incumbents appear to have won re-election.

In the 49th Legislative District of west Vancouver, Monica Stonier continues to hold a comfortable lead of nearly 10 percentage points over fellow Democrat Alishia Topper for an open House seat.

Auditor Greg Kimsey said ballots will continue to be counted every day this week, including Friday. According to the Clark County elections website, 208,476 ballots were on hand as of Wednesday, which will boost turnout above 76 percent. So far, 169,244 ballots have been tabulated.

The election is due to be certified Nov. 29.

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