Index Town Council candidate losing one race, winning another as a write-in

INDEX — Former Index Mayor Kem Hunter soundly defeated Bert Shepardson for a seat on the Town Council, but the two will soon be serving together anyway.

Shepardson is winning a different council seat as a write-in thanks to a successful campaign coordinated by his friends.

He’s beating Chuck Davis, who had no opponent on the Nov. 3 ballot, according to election results to be certified Tuesday.

“Isn’t that cool? The people spoke,” Shepardson said Monday. “It was a grass roots movement that wanted both Kem and I on the Town Council. They made it happen.”

Davis could not be reached for comment Monday.

This may be an unprecedented electoral event in Washington. No one in the offices of the Snohomish County Auditor or Secretary of State could recall another time when a person lost a race for one seat on a city council and won a different seat as a write-in the same election.

“I certainly had never heard of that happening before,” said Snohomish County Chief Deputy Auditor Connie Barndt, a member of the canvassing board that reviewed the ballots cast in Index.

State law prevents someone from running as a declared candidate for two seats on the same legislative body in a jurisdiction like a city. But Shepardson was not a declared write-in candidate, making it legal for him to win as one.

In the race for Position 1, Davis received 29 votes while 48 votes were cast for a write-in.

Of those write-ins, 32 were for Robert “Bert” Shepardson or Bert Shepardson and 16 for Robert Shepardson, said Garth Fell, Snohomish County elections and recording manager.

County officials had to do some research to figure out if there might be another registered voter in Index named Robert Shepardson for whom those votes were intended.

And there is — Bert’s father.

Unable to determine if those votes should go to the father or the son, the canvassing board directed Fell to count them separately.

That still left Bert Shepardson with enough votes for the victory.

“I guarantee they were all for me,” the 32-year-old journeyman plumber said Monday.

Shepardson said he knows the leaders of the “grassroots movement” that got him elected but did not encourage it. He declined to identify them or say if he tried to discourage them.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “Whatever was supposed to happen was going to happen.”

Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.