Via the SecState’s blog, From Our Corner, regarding the approval vote of Referendum 71, which means Senate bill 5688, dubbed the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law for homosexual and senior couples, will be enacted:

The referendum, placed on the ballot by foes of expanded rights for state-registered domestic partners, has been on hold since it was passed by the Legislature earlier this year. If the vote holds, Senate Bill 5688 will go into effect Dec. 3. The election returns will be certified by Secretary of State Sam Reed and Gov. Chris Gregoire, probably on Dec. 1, but under provisions of the Constitution, a bill referred to voters and approved takes effect 30 days after Election Day, or Dec. 3 in this case.

The full blog post, over here.

The ultimate decision could have far-reaching impacts, not just on the state’s initiative and referendum process, but also for other “open government” laws like the disclosure of who contributes to political campaigns, and how much they give. For those reasons the R-71 case has attracted the attention of legal scholars nationwide.

The full story at SeattlePI.com, right here.

It’s not local, but King County affects us, too, as does who Seattle chooses as their mayor.

Via the Seattle Times:

Joe Mallahan conceded the Seattle mayor’s race to Mike McGinn Monday evening, saying McGinn’s message seemed to resonate more than his with voters.

“I learned a lot from Mike,” Mallahan said in a brief, prepared speech. “All I can say is he beat me. He seemed to be the superior campaigner this time around.”

Read the full story, over here.

With 61,027 votes counted, it appears we’re done with ballot tallying this election cycle. The total ballots received by the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office so far is 61,582, but not all are counted due to some being declared invalid for whatever reason.

The office must accept any valid ballot with a proper postmark up until certification day on Nov. 24, so some people who didn’t pass the signature match are still able to go into the office and update their signature.

All told, the county had about 53.9 percent turnout, just 1.1 percent below Auditor Shirley Forslof’s initial prediction of 55 percent, but within her second, downgraded prediction. We’re in the top 20 of turnout, though taking out the very small counties (for instance, Columbia County has more than 71 turnout but they have about 2,500 registered voters, while Whatcom County has 114,292) we’re basically number one in terms of how many registered voters we have to how many voted. Average voter turnout in the state, so far, is 48.9 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Check out all county tallying, over here.

I just received this e-mail from Lummi Island resident Michelle Luke, who said she’s off to spend time at the island’s ferry informational meeting that Whatcom County Public Works is putting on ( I.E. ~ part of that outreach some people say the county never does).

Said Luke of her loss to Weimer:

Luke

This campaign has been a wonderful remarkable experience. Meeting Whatcom County citizens in their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods and hearing first hand “their” issues and ideas were the most interesting aspects of this contest. The most exciting experience was that so many people got involved for the first time in their local government and through these election results, saw that involvement translate to a more balanced representation of our County Council.I want to thank my husband and family my wonderful campaign crew and everyone who supported this amazing effort. I wish all the best to Councilman Weimer in his second term.

Michelle Luke

Bellingham small business owner Kathy Kershner solidified her lead over former Whatcom County Councilman Dan McShane for the county’s District 1 seat Monday, Nov. 9.

Kershner defeated McShane by a very slim margin — just 312 votes — winning with 50.29 percent of the vote to McShane’s 49.71 percent. The margin is outside the requirements for an automatic recount.

Kershner will be one of three new council members on the council along with small business owners Bill Knutzen and Ken Mann, and it means the council will likely have more conservative tendencies on various issues, most especially land-use planning.

Kershner, a U.S. Navy veteran and Whatcom County Republican Party precinct committee officer was happy with the win, and thanked McShane for being a “gracious opponent,” who called her Monday to offer her congratulations and help on any issues he has expertise in.

“Now that the real work begins,” she said. “I want to focus on inviting the public back into the processes of our governing here in Whatcom County.”

McShane

“I’m fine,” McShane said of his thoughts on the race. “There’s a big project that I’ve been really wanting to do that involves writing a book. I started working on it this weekend sort of with (a potential loss) in mind.”

McShane has been active civicly the last two years he wasn’t a public official, still lobbying for protections in the Lake Padden watershed as well as promoting a potential land swap with the state Department of Natural Resources.

“I can be selective about what I might be interested in. Mostly I’ve just tried to not so much lobby as get facts in the hands of either the county or city,” he said.

More to come …

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.

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.

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.

McShane

The race is one of four in which no vote totals flip-flopped. All candidates winning on Tuesday, Nov. 3, were still winning the next day, though just 2,911 more ballots were counted the day after the election due to the cumbersome process of reviewing each ballot to ensure they’re legitimate and can be read by the machines.

McShane is winning slightly with 50.8 percent of the vote to Kershner’s 49.2 percent. It’s a vote difference of just 630 votes.

The progressive Democrat did, however, increase the lead ever-so-slightly by 73 votes from the Election Day vote talling.

“It’s better than the other direction,” McShane said of his small lead increase. “I guess I could say I’m feeling a little more optimistic now. I know there was a lot of hard work done toward the end by a lot of folks in the Democrats, so that might have helped.”

Kershner couldn’t be reached for comment prior to a newspaper deadline.

McShane acknowledged that it’s still too close for a “a big, real definitive for sure.”
“I can’t say I feel real great about it,” he said.

The 51-year-old said that his initial focus, if the trend toward his election continues, would be the 8,000-acre land swap between the state Department of Natural Resourcs and Whatcom County in the Lake Whatcom watershed.

Fleetwood

Smith

The County Councilman has 83 percent of the vote to Smith’s 17 percent so far, according to second-day vote returns. Wednesday, Nov. 4 was the first day that Smith’s write-in votes were counted.