From Olympia, the sound of crickets

The State of Washington sure takes its time releasing election results. When they stopped accepting drop-box ballots in their primary last evening at 8:00, they released the first of their counts. Here it is 19 hours later, and they haven't updated those numbers at all. Maybe we'll hear more in an hour or two as they knock off for the day. The whole country is watching a couple of the Congressional races up there with great interest.

UPDATE, 4:20 p.m.: They've dropped some new numbers, and Jaime Herrera Beutler is still ahead of Joe Kent. Her lead has gone from 4707 to 4699. It looks like it has taken the state all day to process about 2 percent of the votes cast. The New York Times says they have gone from 57 percent of votes reported to 59 percent. My amateur calculations show that they have added only 4259 new votes combined, for all of the top four candidates in the JHB race, today.

UPDATE, 7:20 p.m.: About 20,000 more votes were counted in this race by 6 p.m. Kent has closed the gap with Herrera Beutler, a little. He picked up 769 votes more than she did in that batch of 20,000. JHB's lead is now 3930. I wish I knew how many more votes there were to count, but it looks as though the incumbent will hold on to make it to November, when she should be heavily favored.