After an historic Nov. 3 General Election, Multnomah County’s Elections Division was back at it this week for a hand recount of the Gresham mayoral race.
After the initial vote tally, 13 votes separated the two top mayoral candidates Travis Stovall and Eddy Morales. With the difference in votes between the top two candidates equaling less than one-fifth of one percent (.002) of the total number of votes cast for both candidates, the contest fell within the state-mandated margin for an automatic recount.
Upon final certification, 13 votes remained the difference between the top two candidates.
“Every recount of ballots can have minor fluctuations in vote totals which is normal,” said Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott. “The purpose of the recount is to ensure that every vote is counted correctly.”
Recount boards, which are teams of Multnomah County voters affiliated with different political parties, were charged with recounting more than 51,000 Gresham ballots from the more than 467,000 ballots cast in the November election. In Multnomah County, ballots are stored by batch, not precinct.
The boards — while wearing face coverings and maintaining physical distance — re-tabulated each ballot by hand. As required by state law, the results of the hand recount will replace the results of the original machine count.
The recount included a review of all overvotes, when a voter may have marked two candidates in the contest, and undervotes, when there are no markings for any candidate. They also re-reviewed ballots with write-in candidates.
Members of the public could act as observers, including the candidates themselves. Oregon Secretary of State-elect Shemia Fagan was among those who observed the recount process.
The recount concluded late Wednesday afternoon with Stovall maintaining his 13 vote lead over Morales. Multnomah County Elections notified the Gresham City Recorder of the outcome by email.
The last recount to occur in Multnomah County was the Gresham City Council Position 2 in 2018.
Visit Multnomah County's Flickr site for more images of Gresham mayoral recount.