Bingle’s lead shrinks Thursday in nailbiter Spokane City Council race; Spokane school bond lead grows

Spokane’s progressives are within striking distance of a clean sweep of the municipal election for the first time since 2017 as conservative Councilman Jonathan Bingle’s narrow lead over reproductive rights advocate Sarah Dixit continues to evaporate.

The incumbent started with a 202-vote lead on election night, which shrank slightly to 184 with Wednesday’s tally and to just a 68-vote gap on Thursday.

“I’m still feeling good. It’s definitely much closer than I would like, but we’re still up and there’s a lot of ballots left to be counted,” Bingle said in a brief interview.

With at least 2,860 votes left to count (and probably a handful more than that as mail-in ballots trickle into the elections office), Dixit needs roughly 51% of the remaining ballots to swing her way to overcome Bingle.

“Myself and the team are just keeping a close eye on the elections website … and I think we just feel really proud of the ground game we planned for and all the outreach we did,” Dixit said Thursday evening.

Dixit has begun to consider a “ballot curing” campaign, which entails finding voters who likely supported her but whose ballots were rejected for technical errors, typically due to being unsigned or having signatures that do not match what elections workers have on file.

“It’s just being talked about for now, but most likely – with races that are really close, it’s important to do that type of work, making sure people’s votes are being counted and folks are educated about this process,” Dixit said. “We’re still waiting on a few thousand (ballots) for the district, so once we have a better picture on the outcome, we’ll have a better idea of what our strategy will be.”

“We just won’t know until tomorrow’s drop if it’s substantive enough,” she added.

Bingle echoed that sentiment on Thursday.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure we come out on top, but there are still lots of ballots to be counted,” he said.

Voters whose ballots require curing should be receiving notice from the county elections office within three days of receiving the invalid ballot; ballots can be cured by mailed certifications or in-person verification before the elections office closes on Nov. 24. Ballot curing campaigns led by candidates often involve crosschecking incomplete ballots with lists of voters likely to have supported them.

Voters can check to see if their ballots were accepted at votewa.gov.

The election also is edging into automatic recount territory. State law requires a mandatory machine recount if the gap between candidates is less than 2,000 votes and also within a 0.5% margin. As of Thursday night, Dixit was trailing Bingle by 0.7%. An automatic hand recount is mandated if the candidates are fewer than 150 votes and 0.25% between each other.

Cheney continues to have two close races. Timothy Steiner leads Rebecca Long by 27 votes in the tightest Cheney City Council race this election season. In the race for Cheney mayor, incumbent Chris Grover continues to lose ground to challenger Elsa Martin, who now leads by 78 votes.

The Spokane Public Schools bond is in an increasingly comfortable position as ballots continue to be counted, with approval increasing to 61.2% of the vote as of Thursday. Bonds require 60% voter approval to pass.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that ballots can be cured up to Nov. 24, the day before elections are certified by the Spokane County elections office.