Hand recount of 47,900 votes ends in 7-vote victory for a Tri-Cities candidate
A mandatory hand recount of nearly 47,900 votes in the race for Benton County PUD’s District 3 seat flagged three votes that were ultimately deemed invalid.
The result is a net gain of one vote for Mike Massey, the challenger to 12-year incumbent Barry Bush. That meant Massey won the race by seven votes.
Benton County Auditor Brenda Chilton says the error amounts to a minuscule 0.00147% of all ballots cast in the competitive race.
The recount, she says, instills confidence in that Benton County’s elections systems are working the way should.
“We feel really good about these results,” Chilton said. “It’s a lot of work to do these recounts, but it’s important to do them.”
Election staff began their hand tally at 8:30 a.m. Monday and wrapped up after 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
Massey led Bush by 6 votes after the machine count of ballots.
The results are to be certified by the county canvassing board at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.
The hand count shows Massey will win with 23,796 votes, or 49.73%. Bush received 23,789 votes, or 49.72%.
About 260 voters wrote in a different candidate name instead of casting a vote for Bush or Massey.
Chilton says her elections staff tossed out three votes based on the state’s voter intent manual. Two votes were for Bush and one was for Massey.
Two of the variances involved “corrections” that voters made to their ballots. One of the votes originally tallied for Bush was meant to go toward a write-in candidate, while another vote that went for Massey was actually an under vote.
The third ballot included a stray mark, known as a “hesitation mark,” that was misread as a vote for Bush. In reality it was an under vote.
Benton PUD is governed by a three-person elected board. The District 3 seat that Bush and Massey were sparring over includes neighborhoods in south Kennewick.
Washington state law requires a recount by hand when the vote difference between two candidates is less than 150 votes and fewer than 0.25% of the total vote.
The result is the tightest local race in Benton County since 2015.
A manual recount that year resulted in a tie between Brett Amidan and Jill Oldson in the race for a seat on the Richland School Board. Each had 6,178 votes.
Amidan ultimately won the seat over Oldson in a coin toss. Then, in May 2018, she was appointed to fill a vacant seat on the board.
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 2:14 PM.
