One of three races for La Center City Council in the August primary now has enough of a difference in votes to avoid a mandatory recount, though the gap between second and third place in the contest is only four votes.
As of the updated count on Aug. 11, and with only a handful of ballots to count before certification on Tuesday, Clark County Elections data shows Sean Boyle is in second place for the La Center City Council Position 3 primary race with 301 votes, putting fellow challenger Janice Fowler in third with 297. Should the gap remain more than three votes, Boyle will move on to the general election in November, facing off against incumbent Randy Williams, who had 359 votes as of last week.
Boyle’s tight lead developed over a week’s timeframe following the Aug. 3 deadline for the primary. Boyle initially trailed Fowler by 32 votes. Two days later, Fowler’s lead shrunk to a single vote, and by the end of the week Boyle had taken the lead by two.
The second-place race for position 3 is so far avoiding a mandatory recount based on the penultimate count of ballots as the difference between Boyle and Fowler’s totals is greater than a half of a percentage point of the total votes between the two, Clark County Elections Supervisor Cathie Garber explained. Should the difference be two votes or fewer by certification, state law would mandate a hand recount of all ballots in the race.
If the race is tied by certification, the second-place finisher would be decided “by lot” through a coin flip, according to state law.
La Center City Council had the most contested races of any entity in North County this year, with 13 candidates seeking three seats open for election. The city’s other two races, while close, had more definitive front-runners. For position 1, Justin Keeler and Melissa Fox are set to move on, taking first and second place respectively, and for position 2, challenger KC Kasberg took first against incumbent Dennis Hill, who came in second.
As of the Aug. 11 count, Clark County Elections did not have any more ballots to process, Garber said. More ballots could be counted before certification, either because of ones that came in late but had postmark dates before the election deadline, or for resolved signature challenges, she said.
