Varisha Khan secures Redmond council Pos. 1 in recount

Recounts took place in Redmond, Mercer Island and Bothell.

Following the Dec. 5 recount, Varisha Khan has been voted into Redmond City Council, Pos. 1.

Khan received 6,666 (50.15 percent) while her opponent Hank Myers received 6,600 votes (49.65 percent), a separation of 66 votes. These numbers did not change from the original count, which was certified Nov. 26, to the recount.

“I am very happy with the outcome,” Myers said prior to the recount. “I trust that it will not change with a recount. And I’m making my plans otherwise.”

Prior to the recount, Khan said she didn’t expect the recount to change too much.

“We knew we were very close to the recount margin,” Khan said. “Over the course of post election, since Nov. 5, my campaign has been active in chasing ballots and getting signatures and calling folks whose votes have been challenged in order to put us over the edge. It was tough to get just those few to get us over. We knew it’d be very close.”

Upon the Nov. 26 general election certification, a total of three races in King County were officially set for a mandatory recount — and they were all on the Eastside.

In addition to the machine recounts for the Redmond race between Khan and Myers, there was also the Mercer Island City Council Pos. 1 race between Dave Rosenbaum and Daniel Thompson.

There was a hand recount for the city of Bothell council Pos. 2 race between Leigh Henderson and Mason Thompson. That is a multi-county race, shared with Snohomish County. The Snohomish County recount will take place Dec. 9.

In order for a race to qualify for a mandatory hand recount, the candidates must be fewer than 150 votes and less than 0.25 percent apart, according to Halei Watkins, King County Elections communications officer. To qualify for a machine recount, she said the candidates must be fewer than 2,000 votes and less than 0.5 percent apart.

More information and history about election recounts can be found on the King County Elections website.