A call for a recount of votes in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District has so far failed to change any outcomes of the Nov. 8 general election.
The Lewis County Auditor’s Office held its recount and re-certification on Friday morning, spurred by a call from candidate Joe Kent, whose campaign paid $48,589.05 for the machine recount of all 323,927 ballots cast in the race.
Friday afternoon, Tom Stanton, chief deputy auditor for Lewis County, confirmed there were no changes to the vote totals in Lewis County after the process was complete.
The Dec. 8 statewide certification verified Kent’s opponent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, as the winner to replace U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground. The state’s most recent vote count attributed 160,314 votes to Gluesenkamp Perez and 157,685 to Kent.
From the various counties in the district — which includes all of Lewis, Skamania, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark and Pacific counties and a slice of Thurston County — the recounts as of Friday were yielding changes in the single digits.
“We didn’t expect anything to change because we do that process as part of our reconciliation for certification,” said Stanton, who added he would have been “shocked” to see the totals shift.
According to reporting by The Columbian, Vancouver’s newspaper, Skamania County was set to hold its recount early next week. Wahkiakum and Pacific counties reported no changes to the vote totals after recounts while Cowlitz added one vote to both candidates’ totals. The paper also reported Clark County’s recount gave six more votes to Gluesenkamp Perez and two more to Kent.
The Thurston County Auditor’s Office reported on Friday its recount yielded one additional vote for Kent.
These results show the recount from Skamania County, the district’s least populous county, would have to grant Kent thousands of new votes to change the course of the race.
To read more about Lewis County’s recount results, visit https://bit.ly/LC-recount-2022.
The latest results reported by the Washington Secretary of State show Gluesenkamp Perez with 160,314 votes, or 50.14%, and Kent with 157,685 votes for 49.31%.
