Yost likely winner after slow vote count

Yost took 51.52% of the votes cast to Hyde's 48.48%.

Only another 250 votes countywide remain to be counted, according to the Skagit County Auditor's Office, enough votes to turn the results around if they were all from Anacortes, but that's an unlikely prospect.

The race has been tight from the first vote count last week.

The vote count has taken the county what seems an unusually long time considering the state of computer systems today. In fact, Governor Chris Gregoire, noting how long the Seattle Mayor's race vote count is taking, has urged a quicker count.

Gregoire told a Capitol press conference she wants to work on ways to speed up the long drawn-out tally process in Washington state, which still has 140,000 ballots uncounted. That could include an Election Day deadline to return ballots, as Oregon currently requires.

Critics note that after the ultra-close governor’s race in 2004, the state has stressed accuracy over speed. Careful processing, ballot reconciliation and tabulation are time-consuming, they say.

Proponents of the Election Day deadline for the county receiving the ballot say the requirement works fine in Oregon, and that with good public education, voters would adjust. Voters, the parties, campaigns and the media are operating in a 24-7 news environment and have come to expect fast result, they say.