In election returns posted tonight, Republican Shawn Bunney slightly boosted his lead in first-choice ballots for county executive under Pierce County's new ranked-choice voting system.

Last night, Auditor Pat McCarthy (who's also running for executive), ran the computer algorithm that distributes voters' second and third choices. The Democrat held a four-point lead over Bunney.

She doesn't plan to run the algorithm again until next Friday (Nov. 14), so all we can track for the next week are the first-choice votes. Tonight, Bunney padded his lead there, albeit only a little.

He now has 34.75 percent of the first-choice votes, compared to 34.44 last night. McCarthy slipped slightly, from 27.11 percent last night to 26.8 percent tonight. That's probably not enough to eliminate her four-point lead when the second and/or third choice ballots are distributed from voters who backed fourth-place candidate Mike Lonergan and third-place candidate Calvin Goings.

McCarthy's office estimates it has about 80,000 ballots left to count. Pierce County's count is proceeding slower than other counties because it's the only county operating two separate election systems: the traditional election (governor, Legislature, etc.) and the ranked-choice voting system.

The Pierce County auditor's office released more election results tonight.

Democratic state Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, D-Eatonville, is losing her grip on the seat she's held since 1992.

On Wednesday night, Republican challenger Randi Becker held a 125-vote lead. As of tonight, Becker is up by 1,016 votes. The raw totals:

Rasmussen: 23,533 (48.94%)

Becker: 24,549 (51.06%)

Joyce McDonald issued a statement today declaring victory in her bid for the County Council seat being vacated by Calvin Goings. McDonald notes that she has 48.5 percent of the first-choice votes and has enjoyed a solid lead over Democrats Al Rose and Carolyn Merrival in both releases of ranked-choice voting results.

That said, she is decidedly not a fan of the new voting system. She says her council agenda will include a move to drop the RCV system.

Here's an excerpt from a note she sent today to Republican activists:

As you know, the executive’s race is still too close to call, but looking at the “first choice” votes, there’s no doubt that Shawn Bunney could have won if this had been a “top two” election rather than a ranked choice. I look forward to working with my fellow council members to change the fiasco of Pierce County’s “Ranked Choice Voting” to a top two system. That way all races will appear on a “single” ballot, removing the wasted time, energy and money used for two ballots and a flawed counting system.

That's not McDonald's only complaint. She didn't mention Auditor Pat McCarthy by name, but McDonald also blasted the county's operation of poll sites on Election Day.

Probably the greatest travesty was the many disenfranchised voters who did not get to cast their votes because they could not stand in line for two or three hours. Many had to work! This happened to my son in law, who after waiting in line for more than an hour, had to leave to pick up his daughter at school. He then came back, stood in line a second time and still had not voted by the time he had to leave for work. He took a bold step and went to the front of the line and demanded his ballot – much to the anger of many others who were still waiting in line. He was so rushed and frustrated at this point that he only took the time to vote in the presidential and congressional race on the one ballot and then voted in my race only on the ranked choice ballot. This frustration caused by the unnecessary closing of polling places and the overall lack of planning and foresight cannot be tolerated. Our votes are too important.

Friday night's vote tally in Pierce County flipped the outcome of Sound Transit's $17.9 billion expansion among county voters. It turned negative.

It's now losing by 1,113 votes in Pierce County, but it's still passing by a 60-40 margin in King County and by a 54-46 margin in Snohomish County.

Overall, it's passing with 515,991 votes in favor and 381,696 against. And since the fate of the three counties is joined at the hip, that means Pierce County taxpayers will be paying the 0.5 percent sales tax increase even though most of them voted against it.

In the meantime, here's the top of my story today on what approval of the Sound Transit plan means for Pierce County residents:

Don’t expect to see much new bus- or train-related activity in Pierce County in the wake of this week’s overwhelming passage of the $17.9 billion ballot measure for Sound Transit – at least, not right away.

In fact, Sound Transit won’t even start collecting the higher sales tax approved by voters until spring – probably April 1 – and won’t have any of that new money in hand until June. And that would be the earliest that any new bus service would be implemented.

Other promised improvements to bus routes, commuter train stations and Link light rail in Tacoma are much further off.

Here's the rest of the story.

So far, about 1,000 Pierce County ballots have no voter signature or have a signature that doesn’t match the voter’s registration card, Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy said Friday.

That’s not unusual. McCarthy said it happens in every election, and the number of ballots they’ve found this year is about what you’d expect, given the turnout.

In such cases, the auditor’s office sends a letter to the voter to give them a chance to correct the problem and have their ballot count. They’ll also call the voter if they don’t hear back.

But local political parties already have begun rounding up party faithful with problem ballots. They call it a “signature chase.” It’s an effort to make sure every favorable vote counts in a close election.

Here’s an e-mail from Andrea Innes of Shawn Bunney’s campaign that shows how the Republicans are rallying the troops for the signature chase.

You all know, I think, that for some critical races in Pierce County and in the 25th District, the election is NOT over. Bruce Dammeier is now leading but by a not-real-comfortable margin. Same with Roger Bush in his County Council race. Joyce McDonald is inching toward 50% in her ranked choice race, but the infamous "algorithm" will likely need to be applied. Shawn Bunney is way ahead in "first choice" votes and gaining - but that dreaded algorithim leaves the Executive race in limbo. Dave Reichert is looking good, but not assured. And the last I heard, Doug Sutherland is holding out for Pierce County votes.

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