Spokane County general election picture getting clearer as auditor's office counts last ballots

Aug. 4—The Spokane County general election field is nearly set, but recounts are still a possibility in a couple of primary races.

Multiple school board races in Cheney and Medical Lake have been nailbiters. The race for a seat on the board that oversees the Spokane Valley Fire Department has been neck-and-neck, too.

In District 4 of the Medical Lake School District, Ron Cooper has secured a spot in the November election after winning 34.8% of the vote.

Cooper's opponent will probably be Mark Hudson, who sits at 408 votes (22.4%). Nick Hawkins (383 votes, 21.02%) and Steve Stimson (382 votes, 20.97%) still have outside shots at catching Hudson, but the odds of that happening are low.

Spokane County Elections Manager Mike McLaughlin said his office has counted all but a few dozen ballots. Only a fraction of those will come from voters within the Medical Lake School District, however. In order for Hawkins or Stimson to make up the gap they'd have to win an overwhelming percentage of the uncounted ballots.

Stimson and Hawkins have a better chance of forcing an automatic recount, but even that scenario seems unlikely.

Washington law requires machine recounts when candidates are separated by fewer than 0.5 percentage points and 2,000 votes, and hand recounts when the gap is closer than 0.25 percentage points and 150 votes.

Recounts often fail to change even a single vote, though, and they rarely change a race's outcome.

In District 4 of the Cheney School District, John Boerger has clinched a spot on the general election ballot after winning 35.6% of the vote. He'll be competing in November against Bill Hanson, who sits at 33.1%.

Rick Flynn, with 30.4%, is the odd man out. He trails Hanson by too many votes to have a realistic chance of bridging the gap or forcing an automatic recount.

The race for District 5 of the Cheney School District is tighter.

Mitch Swenson sailed into the general election after taking 50.5% of the vote, but Ivan Khala and Bill Lathrop are separated by a mere 49 votes out of more than 7,000 ballots cast.

Unfortunately for Khala, Lathrop probably can't be overtaken. Voters gave Lathrop 24.7% of the vote to Khala's 23.95% and, with just a few dozen ballots left to be counted at most, that lead could be insurmountable. Even pushing the race to within 0.5 percentage points is improbable.

The race for a seat on the Spokane Valley Fire Department's board is over.

Rick Freier will head into the general election as the heavy favorite after winning 54.8% of the primary election ballots.

Freier will face George Orr, who managed 23%. Diana Wilhite is in third with 21.9%. She trails by more than 200 votes, which might be more than the number of ballots that remain to be counted.

In the race for Spokane Valley City Council, top vote-getter Jessica Yaeger (51.9%) can now be certain of her November opponent.

She'll be running against Rachel Briscoe, who took 26% of the vote to Adam Smith's 21%.