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After initially projecting a 21% turnout rate for the May 20 special election, an election day surge in ballots has exceeded county officials’ expectations and tightened a couple of key races.
How tight? A $136 million bond to fund Mt. Hood Community College was passing Thursday morning by a mere 11 votes. That’s 0.02% of the 40,265 ballots cast in that contest. (By early evening, the margin widened to a slightly more comfortable 130 votes.)
The county received more than 47,000 ballots on election day and more than 9,500 in the mail on Wednesday. Those ballots constitute about 40% of all ballots accepted thus far in the election, county officials wrote in an announcement. Accordingly, two races—one for a seat on the Portland Public Schools Board and the Mt. Hood Community College bond—are much closer than initial counts on Tuesday suggested.
The first race that’s grown much narrower is a face-off for the Zone 5 School Board seat, which covers much of Northeast Portland, including Grant and McDaniel high schools. Gary Hollands, the incumbent, suspended his reelection campaign in March and threw his support behind candidate Virginia La Forte. La Forte, a brand strategist by day and yearslong parent activist, was leading with about 55% of the vote on Tuesday.
That lead has shrunk dramatically since, down to 50.4%. La Forte’s opponent, Jorge Sanchez Bautista, has benefited greatly from the election day ballot surge and is now polling at 49.1%, up from 44.6% under initial tallies and about 1,200 votes away from taking the lead. (By Thursday evening, La Forte’s lead narrowed further, to 734 votes.)
Sanchez Bautista, a McDaniel High senior, is a community advocate who has also served as a student adviser to the Oregon State Board of Education. He ran on a platform to bring a student voice to the School Board and picked up key endorsements, including from the Portland Association of Teachers.
Margins for the other three Portland School Board races—whose leaders are Christy Splitt, Rashelle Chase-Miller, and Stephanie Engelsman—have only widened since Tuesday’s initial tally. So has support for the $1.83 billion PPS bond, which has climbed to 59.2% of voters in favor so far.
Meanwhile, the $136 million Mt. Hood Community College bond, which would raise funds by adding 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value to the tax bills of homeowners in its catchment area, is now narrowly leading—by those 11 votes. (On Tuesday, it was failing with 46% of voters approving it.)
Tim Scott, director of Multnomah County elections, says his division has about 6,200 ballots left to process today. The deadline for postmarked ballots is May 27, so there are likely more to count in the days ahead before tallies are final. There is no easy way to process how many ballots are from any specific district or catchment, Scott says. He adds that the county hopes to release another results report by 6 pm today.