West Oahu House Race Looks Headed For A Recount
But elections officials said a close race for a South Maui council seat won’t trigger a recount.
Republican Rep. Elijah Pierick has taken a 20-vote lead over Democratic challenger Corey Rosenlee, according to late election returns released Wednesday night.
If the margin between the two stays under 24 votes, it’s likely headed to a recount under a passed by the Legislature this year. Lawmakers retooled the formula limiting recounts to only the closest of races.
Honolulu elections officials released updated results on Wednesday after processing 18,000 ballots deposited in drop boxes just before the 7 p.m. cutoff on Election Day.
If Pierick snatches back a victory, it would bring the number of GOP controlled seats in the 51-member house to nine. That’s the most Republican seats in at least a decade.
Pierick currently leads Rosenlee 4,706 to 4,686.
The tight contest between Tom Cook and Kelly King for the South Maui council seat — just 117 votes separate them — is not going to a recount, according to state elections chief Scott Nago.
The formula for determining which races go to recounts is a bit complicated.
The law requires mandatory recounts in races where the difference between votes is “equal to or less than one hundred votes or one-quarter of one percent of the total number of votes cast for the contest, whichever is lesser.”
Two numbers to keep in mind: 100 and 0.25%.
The total number of votes cast in the Cook vs. King race, including blank votes and overvotes, is 63,257.
A quarter of a percent of that is 158.1. So, according to the new law, the difference between the candidates in this race needs to be 100 votes or less.
Before the law changed earlier this year, recounts were triggered by whichever number was greater, instead of lesser. If the law didn’t change, that South Maui seat would be headed for a recount.
Check these stories for the latest results, which were updated Wednesday:
