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In the first release of voting results since May 30, Clackamas County tonight added to its ballot count—and, for the first time, showed a different leader in the closely contested Democratic primary for House District 38.
Democratic voters in that district are nearly evenly split between Southwest Portland in Multnomah County (12,700) and Lake Oswego in Clackamas County (11,700). Multnomah County long ago finished its count, and there Gupta got 325 more votes than Nguyen out of 7,008 cast. That margin initially gave Gupta a comfortable lead.
In Clackamas County, where a printer’s error required the hand-duplication of about two-thirds of ballots, the count has been much slower. As of May 30, when the county last released numbers, Nguyen had made up enough ground that he had crept to within two votes of Gupta overall.
Then tonight, the county released a new batch of results, which showed Nguyen with a lead of 339 votes in Clackamas County. That gave him his first overall lead, by just 14 votes.
In a June 1 statement, county elections officials said they didn’t release results May 31 and June 1 for confidentiality reasons and hoped to be finished by June 2. It is unclear whether tonight’s votes are the final tally, but if they are, that would bring the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary for HD 38 to 13,570. The threshold for an automatic recount is a margin of less than two-tenths of 1% or, based on the total number of votes counted so far, 27 votes.
That means that Gupta and Nguyen are likely to have to wait a bit longer for a final result.
