Judge rules on candidate for Bellingham mayor who sought a recount of his signatures

Joel Johnson won’t be on the Aug. 1 primary ballot for mayor of Bellingham after a Whatcom County judge Tuesday rejected his call for an injunction and a recount of signatures on his nominating petition.

Superior Court Judge Lee Grochmal denied Johnson’s motion for an injunction in a case that had delayed the printing of ballots for the primary.

Ballots can now be printed, Whatcom County Auditor Diana Bradrick told The Bellingham Herald after Grochmal’s ruling.

“There’s no authority for me to do what you’re asking me to do,” Grochmal said.

Further, Grochmal said Johnson wasn’t likely to win a challenge over the signature-verification process.

“I’m not convinced that I have the authority to order the Auditor’s Office to do a recount. Under the circumstances of this case, I don’t find that Mr. Johnson is likely to prevail,” she said.

Johnson, a community and labor organizer who founded ReUse Works, which operated the former Appliance Depot, took the unusual step of submitting petition signatures instead of paying a filing fee to run for office on May 19, at the end of the one-week election filing period.

He needed 2,211 valid signatures of registered Bellingham voters in lieu of a $2,211 filing fee, Whatcom County Auditor Diana Bradrick said. He sued to have the signatures counted by hand by employees in the auditor’s office.

Johnson submitted 2,506 signatures but only 1,750 signatures proved valid, Bradrick said in her response to Johnson’s lawsuit, which was contained in court documents.

Of the 716 rejected signatures, 614 of them were from people who were not registered to vote in Bellingham, Bradrick said.

Those signatures have been checked and double-checked, the auditor’s lawyer told the court.

“Politics is hard. But blaming the auditor when someone loses an election is growing tiresome. It’s a familiar complaint that we have seen,” said Royce Buckingham, civil deputy prosecutor.

“(Johnson) is asking things that we don’t have the authority to do. We’re just not in a position where we can just put him on the ballot,” Buckingham said.

Johnson, who observed the verification process, alleged that there were problems with verification software and sought the hand recount.

In court documents, Bradrick denied that there were problems with the signature verification process.

Further, under state law, a recount is only required in case of a narrow margin — one-half of 1%, she said.

Under Washington state’s “top two” primary system, the two candidates with the most votes advance to the Nov. 7 general election.

Five candidates are running for Bellingham mayor, but — because of Johnson’s legal challenge — the race could not be finalized, which delayed printing of primary ballots.

▪ Mayor Seth Fleetwood, who was elected in 2019.

▪ Kim Lund, former director of the Bellingham Schools Foundation and a member of the Whatcom County Planning Commission.

▪ Kristina Michele Martens, the at-large member of the City Council and a key figure in the process to establish the Whatcom County Racial Equity Commission.

▪ Mike McAuley, who served as a Port of Bellingham commissioner from 2010 to 2017 and serves on the Bellingham Planning Commission.

▪ Chris McCoy, CEO of Kombucha Town, which makes fermented tea.

The general election will be Nov. 7.