Election workers in Spokane County began manually counting nearly 145,000 ballots on Monday to determine who will advance to the general election in the race to chair the state Public Lands Commission.

Election offices across Washington are currently conducting the first statewide recount in decades, and the first for a primary in over 60 years. The last statewide recount was in 2004, when former Gov. Christine Gregoire narrowly defeated former Sen. Dino Rossi by 129 votes in her first attempt to become governor. Two recounts ago, Gregoire trailed by 261 votes.

This year’s recount was triggered by a margin of just 51 votes, as Democrat Dave Upthegrove hopes to maintain his narrow lead over Republican Suehl Pederson and become the second candidate on the November ballot. Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler, a former congresswoman who represented Vancouver, had already secured her seat with 22.03% of the statewide vote in the August primary.

Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton expects her office to finish its portion of the statewide count Thursday evening, just in time for the county’s deadline to print physical ballots for the general election. Statewide results should be available around Sept. 3, but that may change depending on when counties finish their recounts.

Mike McLaughlin, the county’s election supervisor, said the length of time could vary from county to county, depending on the number of ballots, staffing levels and the election offices’ experience with recounts.

In more populous counties like Spokane and King, recounts are not uncommon and the process has become routine, which likely means they are completed more quickly. In other counties, a recount has not been necessary in 20 years, he said.

The recount is conducted by pairs of poll workers who go through the ballots one at a time and sort them into one of 10 piles: one for each of the seven candidates, one for handwritten votes, one for too few votes and one for too many votes. The teams focus on one pile at a time, which can contain anywhere from 200 to just a handful of votes, McLaughlin said.

In each pair, one poll worker sorts and counts half a stack while another counts the other half of the ballots. They record their results confidentially to compare at the end, after the two have switched stacks and sorted and counted again.

Once both poll workers have confirmed that their results match, the final result is compared with the machine-counted results of the original election. Any discrepancies are noted and reported, and ultimately sent to the Secretary of State’s office in Washington, where the election results are updated.

Ballot by ballot, stack by stack, and ballot box by ballot box, the same process is repeated until all 144,832 statewide votes cast in the August primary are recertified.

McLaughlin said the recount is expected to cost the office about $45,000, which would be reimbursed by the state.

Because this is a recount of all votes cast in the county, Dalton said they can count in batches rather than sorting ballots by precinct first. She expects this will help streamline what is otherwise a fairly rigorous process.

“So instead of spending a day or a day and a half taking every single ballot out of the box and sorting them by precinct, we’re going to go batch by batch and compare the results to the team’s counts,” Dalton said. “That should speed things up.”

In addition to the two poll workers at each recount site, at least one observer sat on site and monitored the process. Observers are usually representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties or one of the candidates in the recount race and are there to make sure proper procedures are followed.

Most of the observers are retired, like Don Adair and Robert Whiffen, who were there on Monday as representatives of the Democrats and the Republicans, respectively.

Whiffen said he has participated in past elections as an observer and continues to volunteer because he cares about the integrity of elections in the county.

“For me, it’s important to make sure they do it right,” Whiffen said.

Adair expressed a similar view about why he plans to spend most of the week silently watching others count votes.

“Democracy has to be participatory,” Adair said. “And that’s one small thing that every individual can do to contribute.”

Both Whiffen and Adair invited anyone with concerns about the integrity of local elections to come and volunteer to see the good work and security precautions being taken at the Spokane County Elections Office.

“They’ve practically perfected it,” Whiffen said.