Could Tigard's light rail measure end up in recount?

'Yes' on Measure 34-255 clings to a 0.53 percentage point lead as of Wednesday morning.

Unofficial results from Tuesday's election show Tigard voters closely split over whether to authorize their city government to support plans to bring MAX light rail to Tigard.

When the first election returns started coming in at 8 p.m. Tuesday, it was clear Measure 34-255 was a dogfight  "yes" led by just a 619-vote margin. As more ballots were tallied Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, that margin has shrunk to just 119 votes out of 22,357 counted so far.

Oregon law requires an automatic recount if the margin separating "yes" from "no" on a measure is equal to or less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the total votes cast in the race. That puts Measure 34-255 outside of automatic recount range for now, but it's close. "Yes" has 50.3 percent support as of Wednesday morning  50.266 percent, to be more precise.

"We have 20 days after an election to certify the results," Mickie Kawai, Washington County's elections manager, told KOIN 6 News, Pamplin Media Group's news partner, on Wednesday. "And as of today, the day after, we have a lot of ballots that are still in transit. In other words, somebody may have dropped the ballot in another county. ... So we're in sort of a mode of exchanging ballots right now. We could pick as much as two to five thousand ballots from Multnomah (County), as well as from Clackamas (County)."

The city of Tigard sent out a press release Wednesday morning announcing that the measure appears to have passed.

Times

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