Update: Friday, 9:27 p.m. -- The Mallahan-McGinn contest seems to be just about over, except for the concession. No more vote counts due this weekend. So tune in Monday. (Oh, and I fixed the headline on this post.)

Original post follows:

While we wait for the latest results from King County, consider this rather irritating bit of historical perspective.

In 2001, we didn't know the winner of the Seattle mayor's race until nine days after election day, when then-City Attorney Mark Sidran finally conceded to Greg Nickels.

Though that outcome had seemed likely for days, Sidran held out for more than a week after election day in the hopes that late absentee ballots would trend his way. It didn't happen. He finally gave in when Nickels widened his lead to 2,726 votes. (Nickels eventually won by 3,158 votes.)

Right now, Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan are separated by just 462 votes. We'll see if that gap widens when King County Elections releases another big vote count in less than an hour.

State Sen. Fred Jarrett and affordable housing agency director Hyeok Kim will co-chair King County executive-elect Dow Constantine's transition committee.

Constantine announced those appointments moments before King County Elections released the latest vote count this afternoon, widening his already decisive margin over former TV news anchor Susan Hutchison.

Hutchison conceded her loss in a phone call to Constantine after the updated vote count, Constantine spokesman Sandeep Kaushik said.

Jarrett, a former mayor of Mercer Island, ran against Constantine in the eight-way primary for county executive. Jarrett said earlier today he had told Constantine he was "eager to help in any way that I can. It's really important that he can be successful."

Kim is executive director of Inter*Im Community Development Agency, a nonprofit organization that develops affordable housing in the Chinatown International District.

Constantine said he would announce the full transition committee by tomorrow. He said Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, campaign consultant Christian Sinderman and members of Constantine's council staff will be part of the transition team.

Susan Hutchison this afternoon conceded that her opponent, Dow Constantine, has won the King County executive election.

Hutchison, a former TV news anchor, congratulated Constantine in a written statement. "Because the new Executive has only a few weeks until taking office, I want him to be able to move forward quickly to accomplish an orderly transition," she said.

Hutchison acknowledged Constantine's victory after he widened his lead when 53,412 more votes were counted this afternoon. He had 57.5 percent of the votes, to her 42.3 percent.

"Although the outcome is not what we hoped for, it does not diminish my love of this county and its people," Hutchison said in her statement. "For nearly 29 years, I have chosen to live in King County and raise my family here. I will continue to serve this community as I have done and look forward to a bright future."

She said she had called Constantine, chairman of the Metropolitan King County Council, to congratulate him.

Read Hutchison's full statement after the jump.

Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis will serve on King County executive-elect Dow Constantine's transition team, Constantine confirmed this afternoon.

Kurt Triplett, the appointed executive whom Constantine will succeed, said earlier that Ceis would be coordinating the team. Constantine said Ceis, who was once chief of staff to former County Executive Ron Sims, won't be chairing the transition team.

But Constantine said Ceis will help make staffing decisions for the new administration. "He's done several transitions before, as has Christian Sinderman," Constantine said.

Sinderman was a consultant in Constantine's successful campaign for executive. Constantine, chair of the County Council, defeated former TV news anchor Susan Hutchison Tuesday. He takes office after the election is certified on Nov. 24, less than three weeks from now.

With partial returns from Election Day showing Lloyd Hara leading the race for King County assessor, a county employee accidentally updated the office's Web site at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, showing Hara as the new assessor.

On the Web site's home page, a message to the public ended with "Lloyd Hara, King County Assessor." Hara's name also appeared at the end of a message to visitors to the site's eSales Search page, which allows the public to view property sales data. And Hara was listed as the assessor on a form for businesses declaring personal property for tax purposes.

Here's a partial screen shot of that eSales Search page:

"I'm just shocked it even happened," said Interim Assessor Lynn Gering.

Hoang Nguyen, the office's IT director, was contrite about the error.

"We were just being proactive in figuring out where we needed to change things, and we accidentally pushed it out to the wrong server," Nguyen said.

The employee likely chose to use Hara's name because of his lead in the partial returns or name recognition, Nguyen said. Hara is a Port of Seattle commissioner and once served as King County's auditor.

The mistake was caught by staff at about 7 a.m. today and fixed, Nguyen said.

"We were just trying to make sure things went smoothly and we just made it worse," Nguyen said.

As of Tuesday night, Hara had about 34 percent of the vote. Behind him is Robert Rosenberger, a former appraiser for the assessor's office, with 29 percent. Elections officials, who still have thousands of ballots left to count, say results won't be certified until Nov. 24.

"We are not making any predictions," Gering said.

The early returns from King County on Tuesday night showed that, so far, about 22,000 fewer people voted on Tim Eyman's Initiative 1033 than voted on Referendum 71.

Opponents of the measure said for weeks they were worried King County voters would have trouble finding the measure on the ballot. The initiative was placed underneath a large diagram, on the left side of the mail-in ballot, that showed people how to vote.

Matt Barreto, a political-science professor and director of the Washington Poll at the University of Washington, said last month he didn't think there would be much confusion. Now he's changing his mind.

"It appears to be the reason" for the drop-off in votes he said, adding that more analysis needs to be done.

Kim van Ekstrom, a spokesperson for King County Elections, said they're pretty sure placement was an issue.

"It's pretty clear to us that ballot placement definitely would have contributed to the degree of undervote that we've seen on it," she said. "We're going to work with what we've learned from this experience to do better on the next one."

Another factor, Barretto said, could be that the R-71 campaign was better organized than opponents of I-1033 and turned out people who just voted for the referendum and skipped Eyman's measure.

In this case, it didn't matter. I-1033 is losing by a large margin in King County and statewide. The initiative would have limited tax-revenue increases for state, city and county governments to the rate of inflation and population growth. Any money collected above the limit would have been used to reduce property taxes.

However, if R-71 had been in the spot where I-1033 appeared, the story could be different, Barretto said, because the R-71 contest is much closer and King County is offsetting the no vote elsewhere in the state.

The Washington Poll at UW is projecting R-71 will be approved by about a 52 to 48 percent vote statewide. The referendum expands the state's domestic-partnership law.

University of Washington Professor Matt Barreto defended a poll he published just before the Seattle mayoral election showing Mike McGinn trailing Joe Mallahan by seven points.

The candidates were separated in the batch of election returns Tuesday night by just 910 votes, with McGinn in the lead.

Barreto said he thinks his poll was right, and McGinn's last-minute gains are a testament to his get-out-the-vote effort. They also show undecided voters are breaking for McGinn, Barreto said.

His poll showed 19 percent of likely voters were undecided.
Barreto noted that the poll mirrored Tuesday's results in the King County executive's race almost exactly.

"We don't think that the poll was wrong at the time that it was taken," he said. "We think that some things happened in the last week of the election."

King County Elections spokesperson Megan Coppersmith says the county's 4:30 p.m. vote update this afternoon will include between 85,000 and 115,000 more ballots.

The new totals will be crucial to Seattle's tight mayoral race, with rivals Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan separated by a mere 910 votes.

Coppersmith said she's not sure how many of the votes counted today will be from Seattle.

But so far, Seattle has accounted for 35 percent of the votes cast in the county. So if there are 115,000 ballots counted today, 40,000 or so could be from the city.

Not sure that will be enough to decide the mayor's race, but if McGinn widens his lead, it could give us a pretty good idea.