In the name of pummeling a dead ungulate, the latest results from King County Elections show that Mike McGinn is now beating Joe Mallahan by 6,475 votes—a 3.2 percent lead—up from a 5,714 vote lead yesterday.

Fascinating facts: For comparison, Greg Nickels beat Mark Sidran by only 3,158 votes in 2001. But far fewer voters participated in that election. Only 176,800 Seattle ballots were cast eight years ago, compared with 212,498 this year.

Not that it changes the election's outcome, but the man endorsed by labor unions, business interests, the governor, the Seattle Times—all of the supposed power brokers who run this town, or so we thought—is now being defeated by 5,714 votes. That's a three-percent gap. The latest results on Joe Mallahan's loss are here.

In case you didn't catch it, some of these numbers over here show that approximately 20 percent of all Seattle voters looked at The Stranger's endorsements online—meaning at least every fifth voter in the city looked to the SECB for voting guidance (or possibly in order to vote the opposite ticket, but whatever). This isn't even counting cheat-sheet downloads from the home page or the three issues of the paper-paper around town that had the endorsements; we're no mathologists, but that would add some more people, too.

The entire SECB ticket won. Almost. Voters didn't elect our pick for the Human Calculator, err, County Assessor, the King County Council member for District 9, which stretches from central Bellevue to northern Flagstaff, or a greasy half-empty tub of Crisco for Port Commissioner. But everyone else is headed to office. (Sorry, Crisco, we tried.)

So, we the people, you elected 'em: Now what do you want them to do?

Personally, the SECB would like staggered bar closing times (for safety!), more housing like the 1811 building (for drunks!), and a log flume ride from 15th Avenue and East John Street down Denny Way to the sculpture park (for obvious reasons!).

Not that it matters as much now that the conceding and victory speechifying is over, but today Mike McGinn's lead over Joe Mallahan grew even further.

Yesterday it was 4,939 votes. Today it's 5,335 votes.

A modest proposal: Buy more machines to count the mail-in ballots, hire more elections office workers to feed the machines, and get rid of this annoying phenomenon by which we are all sitting around well after election day waiting for ballots that arrived well before election day to be counted.

No need to make that mail-in deadline earlier.

Just speed up the counting before and after the deadline.

If we did that, then on election night we'd have a good, solid snapshot of where the early and on-time voters fell. After that, the secondary drama—because, really, a lot of this complaining is about mail-in balloting interfering with the media's old dramatic narrative schedule—can be in the (hopefully brief) counting of the late arrivals.

Goldy is slapping around the Seattle Times and SeattlePI columnist Joel Connelly for their calls—made here and here—to change the deadline for mail-in ballots. Instead of being postmarked by election day, the Seattle Times and Connelly want ballots received by election day.

Gee, I wonder why the Seattle Times in particular would want to make this change? We knew by Friday night who won the mayor's race—yesterday's returns were a formality—so we only had to wait three days, and the eventual winner—Mike McGinn—was in the lead the entire time. On election night we knew who won the King County Exec race, we knew who are new city attorney was, we knew who won city council seats, we knew who won seats on the school board, we knew the results on R-71 and I-1033. This election was hardly the clusterfuck of cliffhangers that the Seattle Times would lead us to believe.

What's really going on? Maybe the Seattle Times just doesn't like the choices made by last-minute voters. Late voters tend to be younger and younger voters tend to be more progressive. That's why ballots received after last Tuesday have heavily favored Mike McGinn and Dow Constantine. The Seattle Times endorsed Joe Mallahan and Susan Hutchison.

Now it all makes sense.

Mayor-elect Mike McGinn is spending his victory night the same way he spent many nights of his campaign: at his Southeast Seattle campaign headquarters in a room full of volunteers, surrounded by phones and empty pizza boxes. “It looks like a phone bank night,” McGinn says.

McGinn credits his victory with his now legend staff of volunteers, several of whom he plans to hire as his new mayoral staff. “I would be foolish not to take advantage of some of the talented people who we found during the campaign,” he says. “We will also have to bring people with skills and experience that the campaign staff don’t have. It will be a mix of both.”

He faces challenges, however, establishing relationships with the individuals and institutions that historically have held leverage over the mayor’s office. Many key power brokers in Seattle—such as labor unions, veteran politicos, and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, whose former chair, Tayloe Washburn, actually joined Mallahan’s campaign—made their opposition to McGinn clear by pledging their allegiance and money to Mallahan. But McGinn seems undaunted by potential friction.

“I know that the folks who supported Mallahan had legitimate concerns about the direction the city would go,” he says, “and we are going to reach out to them, hear their concerns, and involve them in decision making.”

“Campaigns are different than building coalitions for government … when the passion of a campaign ends, there is the opportunity for people who care about the city to work together to solve problems,” says McGinn, extending a veritable olive branch. “The opportunity will bet there for everyone to participate.”

McGinn has already started mapping his transition from a neighborhood activist in Greenwood to the city’s most powerful politician at City Hall. Yesterday morning, he had breakfast with Ron Sims, the former King County Executive—and current Deputy Secretary of HUD in the Obama Administration—to discuss “tips on effective transition and the challenges ahead of us,” McGinn says. They discussed regional government planning, McGinn said, but he wouldn't share the details of their conversation.

Among McGinn's ambitions before taking office is influencing Mayor Greg Nickels's search for a new police chief (a political football in the campaign). McGinn says he wants to look at the selection committee to “see if I have any suggestions for who else might be involved,” he says. “I have an interest getting it started as soon as possible.” McGinn hasn’t named members of his transition team yet, but, he says, “We are talking to poeple who have been involved in campaigns and city government."

Video from his press conference today...

Here's the video:

(Eli Sanders adds: "And who's the 'We' in 'We did it'? Lots of people, of course, but it's hard to see how it could have been done without those McGinn-leaning late voters.")

• Mallahan concedes defeat while campaign spokeswoman Charla Neuman looks at her BlackBerry

In his mayoral campaign offices on Eastlake Avenue East, Joe Mallahan told a roomful of reporters, "I want to begin by congratulating Mike McGinn on his success. Mike and his team ran a very hard-fought campaign. They should be proud. I wish Mike well as our next mayor."

Mallahan, who had more than three times the money as McGinn and major institutional backing, blames his loss on McGinn's message and “his persistence in staying on message in every neighborhood,” Mallahan said. "He was the superior campaigner this time around."

Asked if he would do anything differently, Mallahan said no, adding, "Mike ran a great campaign too and he beat us." The former T-Mobile executive said, "I'm going to go back to work for the phone company.”

"If I have one regret it is that people came to think of me as a businessman when I am a social justice Democrat with business credentials," said Mallahan, whose campaign ads repeatedly cited his tenure at T-Mobile.

After most reporters left the room, campaign manager Charla Neuman said she thinks Mallahan was "branded as a well-to-do businessman." She added that many voters shared an anti-Nickels sentiment and Mallahnan was branded as a Nickels proxy. She also said voters were looking for change, following Obama's presidential election.

Neuman said that McGinn softening his opposition to the tunnel may have also assisted his victory. "At first I thought Merry Christmas to us," Neuman said. "But then after thinking about it I thought, 'Oh, no. This could really work against us.'"

It's all over but the concession speech. King County Elections just posted the results of nearly 21,000 more ballots, which put Mike McGinn in the lead by 4,939 votes—more than two percent.

Mayor

Mike McGinn 96514 50.88%

Joe Mallahan 91575 48.28%

Write-in 1605 0.85%

Both McGinn and Joe Mallahan talk to press at 5:00 p.m. More results from King County Elections are here.

Will he concede? Will he drag this thing out? Either way, Mallahan's camp is surely drafting several possible variations on what he may say today. In case they need any help with that, we've whipped up two possible speeches conveniently written in the tone that has defined Mallahan's campaign since day one. Feel free to use either or both or just jump around between them, Joe.

MALLAHAN DOESN'T CONCEDE
Thank you for taking the time to touch base with me today, Seattle. For the last several fiscal quarters, we have been driving accountability in one of the most win-win campaigns for mayor this city has ever empowered its stakeholders to take Seattle to the next level with, and we have also been driving efficiencies. I have been spitballing with my creatives, and we agree that the most efficient thing we can all do right now to move Seattle forward is to proactively tie up the county elections process in bureaucratic knots, because bureaucratic knots create jobs. Thinking outside the box is one of my staff's core competencies, and even though none of the integrated scenarios the professionals who work on my campaign have ideated so far are synergistic with the vote-flow metrics, I vow to keep impacting you and the city by focusing on the value-added buzz of all the endorsements I got and not actualizing my exit strategy. That is mission critical. Going forward, we are going to keep going forward. At least until we see a paradigm shift in electoral delight. A sea change in the vote totals is always possible in a paperless office where everyone's busy herding cats. We need to welcome the next generation of vote auditors into the county elections process and tell them to hit the ground running and go the extra mile in making sure vote-total deliverables are not a done deal. It has been a great pleasure of mine to break through the clutter of everything else you're hearing today. Africans support my candidacy. Thank you.

For the sake of efficiency (-driving), a concession speech could begin the same way.

MALLAHAN CONCEDES
Thank you for taking the time to touch base with me today, Seattle. For the last several fiscal quarters, we have been driving accountability in one of the most win-win campaigns for mayor this city has ever empowered its stakeholders to take Seattle to the next level with, and we have also been driving efficiencies. The most efficient thing we can all do right now to move Seattle forward is to proactively admit that voters have bounced the ball into my opponent's court and my opponent is going to take the ball and run with it right into the next generation. I think I speak for everyone when I say I sincerely hope he tags the base and keeps running. At the end of the day, customer service is the name of the game. It has been my great pleasure impacting you with television commercials demonstrating how well-resourced my bank account is, but it is now time to finalize this transition. My campaign does not expect a paradigm shift in getting our votes to the next level. Going forward, we are going to stop going forward. Part of the best practices in politics is the client-centric approach I have brought to shoring up support since the beginning of this campaign, if I can circle back for a second. This face time with me has been very empowering for you the stakeholders, and as well as for Africans. If this election had been held in Africa, I can assure you it would have been a win-win-win. Thank you.

If there's anything we're leaving out that Joe might want to say, put it in the comments. Meanwhile, what do you think is going to happen next?

Text message received last night from Craig Benjamin:

I'm no longer nervous as fuck.

Benjamin has been involved in the campaign longer than his daughter has been alive. Where did he celebrate the latest returns? He texted back: "At home with my family."

Mike McGinn, who could be Seattle's next mayor, is curled up 'round the fire with his family and black labrador, and couldn't be reached. Campaign spokesman Aaron Pickus reacts to the latest results, which put McGinn 2,400 votes in the lead. "It’s a big jump, and we feel pretty good," Pickus says. "But there are a lot of ballots yet to be counted and the race isn’t over."

So... are you gonna win? "Obviously, what we are seeing the right now is the same trend as primary, where voters favored Mike. Right now we feel very good."

"I haven't talked to the team yet," says Charla Neuman, spokeswoman for mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan, "but I can tell you—uh, obviously this is not—it gets harder and harder to overcome these numbers. We're looking to see how many votes are left to be counted."

Is there any hope for Joe? "King County had another 30,000 votes dumped in today, which nobody would have expected—that's abnormally large," Neuman says. "We will wait and see, but it's not going in the right direction for us. We would have to see an immediate reversal in trend, I think, and an abnormally high one."

McGinn is now up by more than 2300 votes. That's outside the recount threshold and "Mallahan would now have to get about 54 percent of the remaining votes — a level he has never achieved in any of the vote counts," says the Seattle Times. The Times also called Mallahan's spokesperson and asked when the city can expect Mallahan to drive his concession forward. Her response is pretty desperate/hilarious:

"It'll be tough to overcome," she acknowledged. But she said a win is "still in the realm of possibility" and that the campaign wants to evaluate "oustanding factors."

For example, she said, there may have been some Seattle ballots in a vandalized ballot box in Tukwila.

* I added that "Right?" because I didn't want to jinx things.

Mayor

Mike McGinn 85416 50.31%
Joe Mallahan 83032 48.91%
Write-in 1328 0.78%

That's a 2,384-vote spread.

Reacting to the news that his lead in the mayor's race has grown both by number of votes and percentage of the vote, Mike McGinn says, “We were hopeful that the late ballots would trend our way like they did in the primary." McGinn believes that “the demographics of late voters were probably younger and more supportive of our campaign.” Indeed, records from King County Elections suggest that uncounted ballots may increasingly trend toward younger, McGinn supporters.

Is the race still too close to call? “Hey, we’re waiting to see what the next results show, but the trend looks positive for us now.” The next drop hits between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

About 20,000 ballots just released by King County Elections show that Mike McGinn's advantage in the Seattle mayor's race is growing—slightly. McGinn had a 515-vote lead yesterday; now he leads Joe Mallahan by 1,209 votes. In terms of percentage of the vote, McGinn led by 0.4 percent yesterday, but he now has a 0.8 percent advantage.

Mayor

Mike McGinn 75,657 49.99%

Joe Mallahan 74,448 49.19%

Write-in 1240 0.82%

All the King County election results are here.

By comparing voter rolls to records of ballots received by the county, Mike McGinn's mayoral campaign found that uncounted votes include far more of the youngest demographic, which are McGinn's voters, than counted votes. In contrast, uncounted votes include about 50 percent fewer voters over 65 years old than the previous counted votes.

• King County Elections has counted 137,025 ballots from Seattle voters and the McGinn camp estimates the county has an additional 55,000 uncounted ballots on hand.

In a recent SurveyUSA poll, you can see that McGinn's base is among voters 18 to 34. In contrast, Joe Mallahan's base is older voters, especially voters over 65 years old. In other words: Uncounted ballots appear to represent younger voters—who are more likely to be McGinn supporters—than the votes already counted. This could mean that the next batch of votes puts McGinn over the edge.

Late voters could also be McGinn voters if they read The Stranger.

According to Google Analytics, the Stranger's bill of endorsements—which give a hearty endorsement to McGinn—was viewed by 43,933 unique individuals. Of those, about 18,500 people viewed our endorsements in the last three days before the election. (That's not even counting cheat-sheet downloads from the home page or three issues of the paper around town that had our endorsement cheat sheet.) So those are late voters, they're mostly likely young voters, they are probably mostly McGinn voters, and they are voters whose ballots may not have been counted yet.

Seattle is estimated to have 213,841 total ballots when it's all said and done.

As if there wasn't enough anxiety caused by the daily late-afternoon update in our insanely close mayor's race, King County Elections announced moments ago that officials would release two batches of results today. The first will come at 4:30 p.m. and the second drop will hit between 9:00 p.m. and 10 p.m. There won't be any updates over the weekend. Results will be posted over here.

Please try to restrain the schadenfreude as you read this (delusional) letter from King County Executive candidate Susan Hutchison to her supporters. In conceding her defeat, she stands by giving "the right message," running a "fair and honorable campaign," and, lastly, comparing her career to astronaut John Glenn, who went on to serve in the US Senate. Because being a local television news anchor is equally prestigious as being the first American to orbit earth. Hutchison's email is after the jump.

• Baconcat

But Valerie Hartwell, co-Pastor of the Rivers of Glory Christian Church, said in an email to the Olympian, "Seeing the manifold Hand of God on our behalf time and time again, we cannot help but remain strong in faith that our Lord will see us through again." However, Baconcat sent the photo to the right and says, "He supports R-71." Indeed, He sure does.

Washington Poll also released details an R-71 poll conducted in late October. The presentation looks at how religious views, exposure to gay friends, and biases affected voter opinions about R-71.

Here's a statement just issued by King County Elections:

Elections’ staff discovered yesterday that the drive up ballot drop box located at Elections headquarters in Tukwila had been vandalized sometime earlier that morning. As a result, the metal cover plate of the “snorkel,” which is that portion of the drop box at the top of the deposit shoot that is sealed at the conclusion of the election, had been pulled apart from the unit and removed from the site. The drop box still contained 860 ballots sealed in their return envelopes.

So the box "still contained 860 ballots" after the cover was "pulled apart." Yikes. That seems like a security breach. I've called King County Elections officials to ask if ballots may have been stolen, but haven't heard back. I wonder how many ballots were in the other, comparable drop boxes? More than 860? The rest of the announcement appears after the jump.

Leaders of the campaign to approve Referendum 71 say the latest batch of election results confirm that the majority of Washington voters have approved Referendum 71, thereby upholding the state's domestic partnership law for same-sex and senior couples.

Statewide, R-71 is passing by a margin of more than four points. In King county, where the results of 68,507 ballots were just released, voters are approving R-71 by a 34-point margin. King County Elections officials estimate they have another 138,000 ballots on hand to count. But Protect Marriage Washington, the fanatical Christian group that put the domestic-partnership law on the ballot, has yet to concede.

State Senator Ed Murray (D-43), prime sponsor of the domestic-partnership law, says its a done deal. "I'm pleased and relieved," Murray says. "Pleased as a native son of this state that Washington continues to respect its citizens and relieved because I don't believe we were as ready as a community as we could have been."

It was the shortest referendum campaign in state history—less than two and a half months from qualifying for the ballot to election day. The approve Referendum 71 campaign was run by Washington Families Standing Together. The group organized a massive fundraising network, dozens of cooperating groups, and thousands of volunteers across the state.

"The margin is likely to continue to increase over the next few days" says campaign manager Josh Friedes. "To have this large a margin in an off-year election, when the electorate is older and more conservative than in a general-election year, is proof that the people of Washington strongly support gay and lesbian families."

"I think we immediately have to continue conversations about the problems that our families will continue to face until we achieve marriage equality," Friedes says.

But Murray think the next challenge for LGBT-rights advocates will be fending off challenges to the existing domestic partnership law.

"I expect that the far right--because they lost in this state--nationally they will target this state," Murray says. "I think we face a series of initiatives from the far right and we will have to have these campaigns year after year to overturn the domestic partnership bill or have voters vote on a version of the Defense of Marriage Act." But Murray says the state's organizing networks now are stronger as a result of the R-71 campaign. "The vote affirms that the strategy we tried in Washington state was the right one," he says, referring to passing three incremental domestic partnership bills, each one granting more marriage rights to same-sex couples. "We engage citizens in conversions about what it means, survivor benefits and funeral arrangements, instead of just focusing on one word."