With a Thurston County voter turnout of 51.77%, all ballots have been counted and the vote certified today with these results of note:

1. Karen Valenzuela won her Thurston County Commissioner seat by 55.47%.

2. Mayor Harding garnered 790 votes with no opponent running against him for Mayor.
Four years ago, Mr. Harding registered 848 votes against an opponent and with 500 less registered voters in 2005. That is very interesting!

3. Of the 790 voters that voted for Mayor Harding, only 703 of those cast a vote for Mayor Pro-tem Bob Isom, 723 for Mike McGowan and 732 for Russ Hendrickson, all who ran unopposed for their Council seats.

4. Tracey Wood won the only contested Yelm City Council seat by 52.61%.

5. With only 901 voting here for local positions to date (the combination of votes cast for Yelm City Council candidates Wood 474 & Littlefield 427, who ran against each other for the same Council position) of the official number of 2,663 registered voters and 5,500 in population, that’s only a 33.8% voter participation, or 18% below the county-wide turnout.

Ed. Note:
This is a true embarrassment for the City of Yelm and certainly NOT a mandate for Yelm’s elected officials. And this statistic is on top of the facts that not one person came forward to run for public offices against the Mayor or 3 other City Council positions!