In the race for Washington's 8th Congressional District, incumbent U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert now leads Democratic challenger Darcy Burner by 2,855 votes. That's 1,000 more than at the last count.

7:20 p.m.
Reichert: 111,584 votes, 50.65%
Burner: 108,729 votes, 49.35%

More than 99 percent of votes have been counted from polling places in the King County portion of the district, where Burner leads by 1 point.

So far in Pierce County, Reichert leads Burner by 13 points.

Terry Bergeson just called to say she'd decided to concede the state Superintendent of Public Instruction race to challenger Randy Dorn.

Bergeson, a former Tacoma schools teacher and counselor and onetime president of the Washington Education Association, said she called Dorn after seeing the latest vote count. She now trails 51.25 percent to 48.75 percent.

"All my pals have said, 'Wait it out, wait it out,' " she said. "But those numbers are not getting better."

She pledged full cooperation with Dorn and to begin working on a transition plan to "give him a head start."

"It's a hard one for me," said the three-term schools chief of the loss. "These have been the best years of my professional life."

And now The Associated Press is calling Peter Goldmark in the hotly contested race for state lands commissioner. He ousts two-term incumbent Doug Sutherland, the former Pierce County executive and Tacoma mayor.

From the AP:

After more than two days of vote-counting, the Okanogan rancher and molecular biologist built an insurmountable lead against the two-term incumbent, 51.1 percent to 48.9 percent.

Sutherland declined to concede, saying “There’s a lot of counties where we have pretty strong support that have to be counted.”

Goldmark won with the backing of environmentalists and had support of more than 62 percent of voters in King County.

If you check out the Pierce County Auditor's elections Web site and scroll almost a-l-l-l-l the way to the bottom, you'll see that City Council member Connie Ladenburg's Proposition 1 -- to repeal the two-term or 10-year term limit -- is passing by about 300 votes.

Sure, there are still votes left to count, but Ladenburg and other Prop. 1 supporters are hopeful.

I spoke with Mayor Bill Baarsma, who opposed the effort, a couple weeks ago. (He was opposed most, he said, to the manner it was brought up. Instead of going through the charter review process, Ladenburg lined up the votes for a proposition. He said he would have favored changing it to a three-term limit.) He said he had no expectation Prop. 1 would pass. At that time, Ladenburg said she had no idea whether it would pass or not, but she felt she had a lot of support.

I called her again today to see how she was feeling.

"The people I was talking to said that they supported my position. So no, I'm not surprised," she said. "People like the idea. They want to be able to vote for whoever they want to vote for."

I asked if this meant she would automatically run when her term expires in 2010.

"I'm not automatically running. I didn't do this necessarily because I was dying to run again. I'll certainly evaluate that. A lot of it just depends on what my husband's going to be doing," she said.

Husband John Ladenburg ran for Attorney General against Rob McKenna, but didn't win. She said he's taking some time off right now, but has no doubt he'll find a job soon.

Dean Ando, the Tacoma man who grew up with Barack Obama in Hawaii, knew the future president as "Barry" for most of his life.

Ando only recently started calling his old basketball buddy by his given name of Barack.

Now Ando has a protocol dilemma: "I don't know if I have to call him 'Mr. President' or if I can still call him Barack," Ando said Thursday.

No matter what he calls the future president, Ando – who campaigned for Obama for nearly two years – is thrilled by the outcome of Tueday's election, which happened to coincide with his 48th birthday.

Here's the e-mail he sent out on election night:

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We've put up a new hot button poll: Should Pierce County scrap ranked choice voting? To vote and post a comment, click here.

Early indications are that voters may be having second thoughts about RCV, which they adopted by charter amendment in 2006.

Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert has stretched his lead over Democrat Darcy Burner to 1,853 votes in the latest count.

10:30 p.m.
Reichert: 95,221 votes, 50.49%
Burner: 93,368 votes, 49.51%

So far 188,589 votes have been counted in Washington's 8th Congressional District, which blankets East King County and East Pierce County.

Reichert has gained ground mostly in Pierce County, where he's now captured 56 percent of votes to Burner's 44 percent. Burner leads in King County, where she has 51 percent of votes to Reichert's 49 percent.