Between Thursday’s count and Friday’s count, Kathy Kershner earned 53.9 percent of the votes that were tallied by the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office. *UPDATE* - Hypothetically, Dan McShane would need 52.6 percent of the potentially-remaining ballots in order to get back over the top of Kershner, so the fact that his stat is 1.3 percent below Kershner’s trend doesn’t bode well.

… Mary Beth Teigrob took 52.8 percent of the Thursday to Friday count. She needs 76.6 percent of the potentially-remaining ballots to overcome Mann, therefore I’m calling the race because the gap between them is large.

… Michelle Luke took 52.5 percent and needs more than 70 percent of the remaining ballots as well to overtake Weimer. However, their margin is slimmer than Teigrob and Mann, so to be better safe than sorry this is a wait and see for me. Monday’s count should make it definitive.

… Bill Knutzen took 65.6 percent. And this race has already been called.

With perhaps just a few thousand more ballots to count, depending on how many will be invalidated, it’s impossible for Everson small business owner Mary Beth Teigrob to overtake County Planning Commissioner Ken Mann’s lead in the race for the County Council’s District 2 seat.

According to my math, Teigrob would need more than 76 percent of the rest of the potential votes to win, and not all ballots that haven’t been tallied in the vote column will be processed because they’re invalid.

I’m calling the race and have sought comment — for the third time this week — from Teigrob once again. She hasn’t returned repeated phone calls and now her campaign cell phone has been turned off.

A big shift in later ballot counting has put small business owner Kathy Kershner over former County Councilman Dan McShane for the council’s District 1 seat.

Kershner now leads 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent. She leads McShane by 223 votes. It was a switch of 733 votes in her favor during the Friday, Nov. 6 count, an indication that Whatcom County Auditor’s Office has started getting to the more conservative ballots that often come from the Lynden area.

Elections Supervisor Pete Griffin has said that Lynden voters are known for bringing ballots to the Election Day drop box in the city, rather than mailing ballots, and that chunk of votes doesn’t get counted as quickly as ballots that arrive and are processed prior to Election Day.

Meanwhile, the race between District 3 Councilman Carl Weimer and Lummi Island small business owner Michelle Luke has also tightened. Weimer is still in the lead with 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent. He lost nearly a full percentage point in his lead, and the race is now separated by 979 votes.

District 2 candidate Ken Mann and At-Large candidate Bill Knutzen still maintain healthy leads over their opponents, respectively Mary Beth Teigrob and Councilwoman Laurie Caskey-Schreiber. The councilwoman has already conceded to Knutzen. Teigrob has not returned several phone calls seeking comment.

The Auditor’s Office has now counted 57,275 ballots out of 61,539 ballots received, and because of some votes being invalidated for various reasons, not all of those will be counted.

From Herald reporter Zoe Fraley:

A Ferndale High School graduate was killed in Afghanistan Thursday, Nov. 5, after he drove his Stryker vehicle over a buried explosive, according to his family.

Spc. Aaron Aamot, 22, was in the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment and was part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis. He had been serving in Afghanistan since mid-July when he and another soldier were killed by an improvised explosive device that was buried in the road just northwest of Kandahar, said Aamot’s brother, Matt Aamot.

Read the full story, over here.

City Council members are scheduled Monday, Nov. 9, to vote on a 1 percent property tax increase being proposed by Mayor Dan Pike.

The increase was proposed as part of Pike’s 2010 budget plan, which also includes tapping $1.8 million in general fund reserves to help close a gap between next year’s expenditures and revenues.

The 1 percent increase amounts to $180,639 in new taxes that would be spread among all city taxpayers.

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Spinnwolf was kind enough to send me a link to the video from today’s health care reform bill protest outside of U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen’s Bellingham office. The Everett Democrat recently announced his support for the House’s version of the bill, which includes a government-run public option.

Here’s the video:

Oh, yes, and in response to the person asking “Where is The Bellingham Herald when you need it (and the man who responded “forget that”),” the answer would be working on several stories about Bellingham’s property tax increase meeting on Monday, the county’s tax levy shift/fund transfer meeting and schedule vote on Tuesday and more for this weekend’s paper, on deadline. Covering local issues that local readers deserve to have information about, and all that jazz.

Thanks again to Spinnwolf.

Apologies to all this morning for a lack of posting. As per my usual Friday mad rush I’m trying to work on three articles at once. I’ll try to come back sometime this afternoon with some more posts, but until then, there’s this:

Via our AP wire:

Washington state voters have approved the state’s new “everything but marriage” law, marking a significant expansion of rights for gay couples who are registered as domestic partners.

National gay-rights groups say the passage of Referendum 71 marks the first time a state’s voters have approved a gay equality measure at the ballot box.

Read the full story, over here.

The race for the Whatcom County Council District 1 seat got a little tighter after more than 5,800 votes were counted Thursday, Nov. 5.

Former County Councilman Dan McShane still leads small business owner Kathy Kershner 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, according to the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office. They’re separated by 510 votes.

McShane’s lead slipped a bit after Thursday’s count, losing more than 120 votes from the cushion he had the day before.

Meanwhile, the other three County Council races are still the same, though the figures have changed a bit.

Ken Mann slightly increased his lead over Mary Beth Teigrob, though by less than 100 votes, for the District 2 seat being vacated by Councilwoman Laurie Caskey-Schreiber. He is winning 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent.

District 3 County Councilman Carl Weimer continued to best Michelle Luke 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent.

Small business owner Bill Knutzen increased his lead by more than 400 votes over Caskey-Schreiber for the At-Large seat. He led 52.4 percent to 47.6 percent.

Meanwhile, the Auditor’s Office has received back from voters 61,294 ballots for a total turnout so far of 53.6 percent.

Auditor Shirley Forslof initially predicted a 55 percent turnout, though she has since revised the prediction to between 51 percent and 55 percent due to returns having been a bit slower than anticipated before Election Day.

The office has again taken what seems like annual criticism over its ability to count ballots after releasing on Wednesday, Nov. 4, a count of just 2,900 ballots.

Election Supervisor Pete Griffin had predicted the office would be able to tally between 4,000 and 6,000 newly-received ballots that day, but having to count thousands of write-in ballots this election slowed the office down, Griffin said. He had to pull several staffers tasked with other duties off their work for that count, he said.

Though not all write-in ballots have been tallied, the outcomes of those races are clear, Forslof said, so they will put off counting the rest until more normal ballots are tallied.

Thursday the count went back to the office’s typical average, and Griffin was hopeful they can finish counting all ballots received so far by Friday.

To top it all off, the office suffered what any business might during normal operations – one elections staffer ended up sick and another broke their ankle, Griffin said.

More from U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen’s office on the health insurance reform bill that House Democrats may vote on by Saturday. I asked Larsen Chief of Staff Kim Johnston what his thoughts were on the public option, since he hadn’t supported it previously, and because it wasn’t mentioned in his first press release.

Here’s her response.

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Yesterday, I informed you that U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, had announced his support for the House version of a health care reform bill. It’s a piece of legislation that includes a government-run public option, something the congressman initially opposed due to what he believed was inequity in Medicare reimbursement rates nationwide.

I asked both the Whatcom County Democratic Party and the Whatcom County Republican Party that if they would be interested in making a statement about that issue, most especially since the Democrats initially criticized Larsen for not supporting health care reform legislation or a public option.

Democratic Party Chairwoman Natalie McClendon declined to offer a statement. Republican Party Chairwoman Luanne VanWerven has released a statement, calling the legislation the “worst bill ever” and announcing a protest in front of Larsen’s office by the local GOP on Friday. Here’s the full statement:

Van Werven

On November 4, U.S. Representative Rick Larsen released a statement announcing his support for H.R. 3962, the Pelosi health care reform bill. In the face of widespread public opposition, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning to ram through the massive health care bill on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of citizens from all over the 2nd Congressional District have contacted Rep. Rick Larsen to voice their opposition to a government takeover of our health care system. We called, faxed, emailed and attended town hall meetings but it appears Larsen is ready to abandon his constituents for Speaker Pelosi.

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From Politico.com:

Thousands of Tea Party activists descended on Washington Thursday to protest the trillion dollar health care bill and government spending, holding signs protesting Barack Obama’s agenda while aiming chants of “you work for us” at the Capitol building. Full story.

From The Washington Post:

The AARP, the nation’s largest and most influential association of older Americans, endorsed the House health-care bill Thursday morning and vowed to lobby House members in advance of Saturday’s historic vote. Full story.

Two stories on the House Republicans alternative healthcare proposal:

From the LA Times:

Unlike the Democrats’ strategy of trying to provide near-universal coverage and force other major changes to the insurance system, the Republican approach is an incremental one that would do far less to reduce the ranks of the uninsured. It would instead give priority to controlling healthcare costs. Full story.

From the New York Times:

The Republican bill, which has no chance of passage, would extend insurance coverage to about 3 million people by 2019, and would leave about 52 million people uninsured, the budget office said, meaning the proportion of non-elderly Americans with coverage would remain about the same as now, at roughly 83 percent. Full story.

From The Washington Times on a Saturday vote on the Democrat’s version, and that the votes appear there.

Leaders and at least a handful of pro-life Democrats appear to be close to a deal on language that would assure them that taxpayers would not have to pay for abortions, which is the most significant hurdle to final passage. Full story.

Via our AP wire:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Buying a home is about to get cheaper for a whole new crop of homebuyers — $6,500 cheaper.

First-time homebuyers have been getting tax credits of up to $8,000 since January as part of the economic stimulus package enacted earlier this year. But with the program scheduled to expire at the end of November, the House voted 403-12 Thursday to extend and expand the tax credit to include many buyers who already own homes. The Senate approved the measure Wednesday, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.

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Yesterday, I posted for you a Politico article discussing the impact of various elections and what it allegedly meant to the Obama Administration.

And now, I give you the flip side, where Jon Stewart takes aims at both the Democrats and Republicans and how they discussed the elections Tuesday night and throughout the week:

Lilliquist

But Lilliquist did leave me a voice mail.

Said the newly-elected council person:

I want to congratulate Catherine on a well-run campaign. She was gracious to the end. I want to thank all my supporters. Now the work begins and I’m ready to hit the ground running.