French holds lead in Lake Forest Park Council race

By Evan Smith

Lake Forest Park City Council challenger Tom French maintained his lead over incumbent Councilman Ed Sterner in the Tuesday, Nov. 15, vote count.

With between 7 and 9 percent of the expected King County ballots left to be counted, French held 50.52 percent of the LFP votes to 49.14 percent for Sterner.

French’s total of 2,417 votes to Sterner’s 2,351 extended French’s lead from 64 votes Monday to 66 votes Tuesday and pulled French further from recount range.

With the Tuesday two-candidate total of 4,768 votes, the candidates would have to be within 23 votes to be within the 0.5 percent margin for a mandatory recount.

The Tuesday count was part of a King County voter turnout of 47.37 percent, compared to an expected final countywide turnout of 52 percent.

Turnout in Lake Forest Park was 58.72 percent through Tuesday.

Of the 5,524 ballots counted in Lake Forest Park, 441 left the French-Sterner contest blank, and 15 cast write-in votes.

King County has about 552,000 ballots on hand with about 39,000 uncounted – almost 7 percent. Elections officials had expected to get more than 563,000 ballots. The current count of 512,930 is more than 50,000 short of that -- almost 9 percent.

The number of uncounted ballots statewide is only 3.1 percent. The statewide turnout was 50.74 percent through Tuesday – well ahead of the expected 47-48 percent.