Logan not sure of fate of 390 votes

With the general election less than a week away, King County Elections Director Dean Logan said Wednesday he doesn't know what happened to 390 ballots in the September primary.

The ballots may well have been counted, Logan said, despite Republican Party claims Wednesday that they probably were lost.

This latest election-office discrepancy was discovered in September in a state-mandated ballot-reconciliation report. Logan said his staff may have made data-entry mistakes in preparing the report, but he insists his office did not necessarily lose 390 ballots.

"There's a discrepancy between the number of voters credited ... and the number of ballots counted," Logan said. "It does not necessarily mean there were 390 votes lost. ... There's nothing to indicate to us that there were other ballots that didn't get counted."

Logan's office did discover 18 ballots early last month that were left in a box and not counted in the September primary.

The report indicates the county received 246,031 absentee ballots that were "valid to count" — but counted only 245,641, a discrepancy of 390.

"Their numbers don't add up," said Republican Party state Chairman Chris Vance.

The discrepancy is the latest allegation by Republicans about mistakes in the September primary election. They say more than 5,000 people were registered to vote more than once, and that more than 1,500 voters are illegally registered at mailbox-rental facilities.

And Republicans say the 390-vote discrepancy is important because the King County sheriff's primary was decided in a recount by just 62 votes.

Republicans say the problems with the election office are reason enough to oust King County Executive Ron Sims and elect Republican County Councilman David Irons as executive.

Logan and Sims say the Republicans are spending far more effort trying to score points with voters than helping fix the election system.

"We do seem to see an issue raised just about every other day," Logan said.

The discrepancy was first noted at a Sept. 30 meeting of the county's Canvassing Board, which oversees elections.

Vance defended the timing of Wednesday's announcement, just days before the general election. He said his staff received the county's Mail Ballot Summary Report on Friday and hadn't verified the discrepancy until Wednesday.

State lawmakers required a more detailed mail-ballot report this year after the same document became an issue in the 2004 court challenge of the governor's election.

One of Logan's employees was fired and another demoted after it was discovered they had falsified the 2004 mail-ballot report.

State Republicans said it appears election workers used the same faulty method in September to reconcile this year's primary-election ballots.

Logan said his staff did the report correctly, but he acknowledged that 390 was "a number that's indicative of the fact that there needs to be further work and time put into the reconciliation process."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com