Sims defends election system

King County Executive Ron Sims has come out swinging at critics who have called the county's management of the contested gubernatorial election either incompetent or corrupt.

In his first news conference on problems with the Nov. 2 election, Sims yesterday said he will ask the County Council for money to create a "state-of-the-art" election facility and to improve worker training.

Sims defended Elections Director Dean Logan and said he was convinced the county "conducted the most accurate count humanly possible with the systems we have today. ...

"I am deeply disappointed that so many have sought to take political advantage of human error and turn it into baseless cries of fraud and corruption."

Yet even as Sims praised Logan as "the best," critics said they were concerned that the county couldn't figure out who had cast 1,853 ballots. Sims was interrupted at one point by detractors.

Sims and Logan shared the podium as they released Logan's 24-page report on the election. The report outlined proposals for changes but provided little new information about a series of errors.

Those errors included the mailing of duplicate ballots to some absentee voters; the mistaken rejection of some absentee ballots cast by voters whose signatures weren't found in a computer system; and the improper counting of some provisional ballots before the eligibility of the voters was verified.

Some of those problems have been cited by the state Republican Party, which has filed a legal challenge to the election of Democrat Christine Gregoire. Gregoire beat Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes, according to a statewide hand recount after the initial count and a machine recount showed him ahead.

Sims said problems with the election have unfortunately overshadowed Logan's successes, such as replacing an outmoded computer system in a presidential-election year, running a primary election under new state guidelines and handling a record number of absentee and provisional ballots.

"We do not need radical reform of elections. We need thoughtful, reasonable reforms," Sims said.

Sims and Logan proposed consolidating the county's now-scattered election operations into a single state-of-the-art facility. Sims said he has made it a priority to find a site for that facility.

Logan said he plans to create a "formalized" staff-training program, to update work procedures, beef up security, build a permanent communications center and replace some temporary workers with permanent employees.

Sims said he would send the Metropolitan King County Council supplemental-budget requests for the new facility and for improved training, staffing and technology. Logan said costs have not been calculated.

Logan endorsed proposals before the state Legislature that would move the primary election to an earlier date, reimburse counties for the cost of statewide elections, give counties more time to certify election results and authorize counties to conduct some elections entirely by mail.

Logan said his plan "is not particularly exciting; it's not going to be seen as radical." But, he said, it outlines "responsible changes that will help us do the job and address the public-confidence issue."

County Councilwoman Jane Hague, R-Bellevue, a former county-elections manager, said confidence has been shaken by the 1,853-vote discrepancy between the number of ballots counted in the election and the number of voters credited with having voted. She called the gap a sign of "sloppy management. ... There are two things that should be managed to zero defects. One is nuclear technology; the other is elections."

"Ultimately, the buck stops" with Logan, Hague said. She added that she has had conversations with him and that he has acknowledged the need to work with his staff on better accounting.

On Tuesday, County Councilman David Irons, a Republican from Sammamish and a former member of the county canvassing board, said the accounting problem has grown since 2000, when there was a 17-vote discrepancy between ballots and identified voters.

Hague said she couldn't remember the size of the variance when she ran elections between 1986 and 1993.

Republican members of the County Council yesterday called for reactivation of the Citizens' Election Oversight Committee, which last year made more than 100 recommendations for improving elections.

That proposal is supported by Democrats Larry Phillips, chairman of the council, and Julia Patterson, chairwoman of the council panel that oversees elections.

Sims' and Logan's news conference was briefly interrupted when two attendees laughed and one exclaimed, "Garbage!" in response to Sims' statement that "we had an accuracy rate that any bank would envy."

Sims chastised them, saying he was taught by his mother that "good home training" means not interrupting others.

One of the men who interrupted, Paul Hess, a nonjournalist from Shoreline, later said he was sorry about his outburst but found Sims' accuracy claims "laughable."

When blogger Stefan Sharkansky asked about Sims' claim that the county was "99.98 percent accurate" in counting votes, Logan said the number was calculated by comparing the nearly 900,000-vote turnout with the discrepancy of 1,853 between ballots and identified voters.

In that case, Sharkansky replied, the accuracy rate was actually 99.8 percent.

Based on the county's official vote total of 898,238, he was correct.

Washington state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance later said that if a bank with $50 million in assets was 99.8 percent accurate, "$100,000 would be missing and someone would probably go to jail."

Logan will present his report to the County Council's committee of the whole Monday. The report can be found at: www.metrokc.gov/elections/ElectionsReport.pdf

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com