Contested Cheney City Council race spurs machine recount

The race for a Cheney City Council seat will come down to a recount.

The Spokane County Canvassing Board finalized the Nov. 4 election last week.

In the race for Cheney City Council position 4, Rebecca Long, a software engineer, currently has 1,079 votes, while Tim Steiner, a retired firefighter, is trailing just behind at 1,070 votes.

Cheney ballots will be recounted by machine.

Washington law calls for an automatic machine recount if the difference between two candidates is less than 2,000 votes and also less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast for both candidates.

A manual recount occurs when the margin between the top candidates is less than 150 votes and also less than 0.25% of the total votes.

Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said election results rarely change, even by one vote, after a recount. Recounts in Spokane County occur frequently compared to other counties in the states because Spokane is fairly evenly balanced between Democrats and Republicans, she said.

“I think that it’s really important for added confidence, especially in tight races like mine,” Long said.

With a background in technology and her history of being a community organizer, Long feels she can help bring some modernization to Cheney. One of the first things she wants to do is create a Facebook page for the city of Cheney to provide greater transparency and communication to the community.

She also wants to resolve staffing issues across the police and fire departments and assess problems in Cheney, including the presence of sediment and low water pressure. By analyzing the research and understanding the approximate cost of fixing the problem, Long is hopeful the city can make concrete plans to address it.

Steiner, who served the Cheney community as a firefighter for 38 years, advocated strongly for increased public safety. He did not respond to a request for comment for this article. He ha’s argued continually for promoting economic growth and keeping up with the city’s infrastructure needs.

Dalton explained that the recount scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday will probably be completed in about an hour. Once it is finished, regardless of the outcome, the results are final, Dalton said.

“Based on past experience, the likelihood of a change in the result is extremely low,” Dalton said. “So I will not say that she will be the winner, because that’s not what we do until we actually finish our process.”

see 2025 election final results northwest, 9