Mitchell Kelly led in the race for Clark County auditor, according to early returns on Tuesday. Kelly, a financial reporting manager in the Clark County auditor’s office, is running against former Clark County Councilor and former Oregon state lawmaker Eileen Quiring O’Brien.

As of 9:30 p.m., Kelly had more than 56% of the vote to Quiring O’Brien’s 43%. The results will be updated again on Wednesday.

The normally sleepy race became a local focus when Greg Kimsey stepped down from the role after nearly 30 years. The county auditor is the top official in charge of leading local elections, auditing county agencies and issuing marriage licenses, among other things.

In Clark County, the auditor also oversees elections in the competitive and high-profile 3^rd Congressional District. Clark County also makes up some or all of the 17^th and 18^th Legislative Districts, where four statehouse seats are being targeted by Democrats this year.

Both Kelly and Quiring O’Brien campaigned on boosting confidence in the auditor’s office at a time when Washington state’s election system has been subject to allegations of non-citizen voting. The office also faced worries that ballots might not be counted because of USPS mail processing delays.

But the two candidates offered starkly different visions for how to build public trust.

Kelly proposed a mostly business-as-usual approach to the office. If elected, he said, he hopes to improve communication between the auditor’s office and the public to help residents better understand the election process.

Quiring O’Brien ran her campaign with a promise to reform the Clark County auditor’s office. She regularly tried to discredit Kelly and Kimsey in a series of YouTube videos, pledged to lead an outside audit of the auditor’s office and said the county’s voter rolls needed to be cleaned to remove excess voters who had moved or died.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/11/03/clark-county-auditor-kelly-obrien-election/