John Stokes has become the seventh and final 2012 Bellevue City Council Member.

King County Elections announced a 54-vote margin between Stokes and his opponent, land-use attorney Aaron Laing, following a two-day recount done by hand at the Elections office.

“I am very pleased to have held a lead throughout the ballot count and throughout the recount, actually gaining three votes in the process, and being finally declared the winner,” Stokes said in a statement.

The vote closes what has been one of the closest races in the state, and Bellevue’s most contested election in recent memory. Many predicted the race to be a tossup, but few could have guessed that the margin of votes between the two candidates would never exceed 200 votes. Stokes opened with a 127-vote lead on election night, Nov. 6. His lead was razor thin, and the race appeared to be up for grabs. For several weeks, new results released each day drew the race closer, down to a margin of 51.

State law stipulates that the margin between the two candidates to necessitate a hand recount is less than 150 votes, and .25 percent of the vote. A machine recount happens with a margin less than 2,000 votes and .5 percent.

Laing said on election night that he was prepared for the long haul, expecting a tight race where the winner didn’t get more than 51 or 52 percent of the vote

Bellevue’s was the first of three recounts county staff must work through this election season. A council race in Des Moines was close enough to trigger a machine recount, while races for the Enumclaw School District and the Public Hospital District will be recounted by hand.

This recount represents an outlier in the county, where many by-hand counts have come in smaller areas with only a couple hundred voters. In the 2011 election, Bellevue voters returned 35,865 ballots, or nearly 54 percent. This turnout represented the highest of the major cities in the county, showing the importance of this election to the city of Bellevue. Among the recounts, the next highest was the Enumclaw schools race, with more than 8,200 votes to be counted and a 53 percent turnout.

Political groups, and many voters, made Bellevue’s election a partial referendum on the East Link light-rail project, which has been a dividing point on the council. Much of the political bargaining on the project has been completed, and the public showed their support for incumbents in favor of Sound Transit’s preferred route. Both John Chelminiak and Claudia Balducci garnered nearly two-thirds of the vote.

Bellevue is used to more lop-sided election results, according to county records. Since 1999, the closest race in Bellevue came in 2009 when Kevin Wallace defeated Patsi Bonincontri by nearly 1,100 votes, and a 3 percent margin.