A week after election night, Democratic candidate Eric Holt is still holding out hope in his race for Clark County Council chair. The auditor’s office estimates it still has 5,000 ballots left to count.
The most recent vote count, released Tuesday afternoon, showed Republican Eileen Quiring’s lead over Holt narrowing slightly. The most recent count had Quiring with 93,146 votes to Holt’s 91,579, a difference of 1,567 votes.
The previous count, released Friday, had Quiring leading by 1,680 votes. Another 7,878 voters didn’t vote in the county council chair race, and 18 people voted for both candidates.
Quiring has 50.33 percent of the vote. Holt has 49.49 percent, and the remaining 0.18 percent were write-in votes.
In a text, Holt said that with thousands of ballots still left to count, he wasn’t ready to concede.
“After meeting with my campaign staff and supporters, we have decided that it would be unfair to make any final decision before every last vote has been counted,” he said.
At the moment, the race is not close enough to trigger an automatic recount. In Washington, a recount is required when less than 2,000 votes separate the top two candidates and is also less than 0.5 percent of the total number of votes for both of the candidates.
On Friday, Quiring said that she was optimistic about the race but was reluctant to declare victory until securing 2,000 votes more than Holt. Previously, Holt said he would reach out to help voters whose ballots were challenged. These include ballots where the voter’s intent is unclear, there were signature issues or replacement ballots were issued. The Clark County Elections Office has also been processing ballots that were postmarked by the Nov. 6 deadline but took several days to be delivered by mail.
All other local races appear to have been decided.
The election will be certified on Nov. 27.
