Where's Logan? Stories change

Where was elections chief Dean Logan on Monday when the Metropolitan King County Council debated a historic proposal to conduct elections by mail?

His staff at first said he was attending a statewide election administrators' conference in Spokane.

Then they said he was working, somewhere, on something.

He was actually out of town on vacation, as Logan confirmed by e-mail Wednesday.

Some council members grumbled about his absence Monday when the assistants substituting for him were unable to answer questions raised by citizens and council members. An expected vote was delayed for two weeks in order to hear Logan's responses to those questions.

If adopted by the County Council, the ordinance promoted by Logan and his boss, County Executive Ron Sims, will make King County the largest local jurisdiction in the country to conduct elections almost entirely by mail.

But the changing stories about the reasons for Logan's absence appeared to undermine the credibility that he had rebuilt since the problem-plagued 2004 gubernatorial election.

Logan told the County Council by e-mail last Friday he couldn't attend the Monday meeting, explaining that he would be at the Spokane elections conference "most of next week." Election administrators said Monday that he was at the conference.

But on Tuesday, Jonathan Bechtle of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation pointed out that the conference didn't begin until Tuesday, the day after the County Council meeting.

A spokeswoman for Sims, when asked where Logan was, responded on Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning that he was "working away from the office." She offered no details on where he was or what work he was doing.

Logan e-mailed The Seattle Times on Wednesday that he was on a scheduled trip. When asked to elaborate about the trip, Logan responded that the questions were "offensive and irrelevant."

Sims spokesman Sandeep Kaushik said Logan's trip had been scheduled weeks earlier and that the County Council had postponed its vote on the mail-balloting proposal twice.

"There wasn't any intent of his ducking being there or anything of that nature," Kaushik said. "I think the assumption was the presentation [on mail voting] had been made at an earlier session and that Monday might be something more of a formality."

The changing explanations of Logan's absence upset several council members, who called the vote-by-mail proposal — which would take effect in 2007 — the most important restructuring of elections in county history.

"Maybe we should hold our next hearing in Kitsap County, where he lives, to make it easier for him to attend," fumed Councilman Pete von Reichbauer, R-Federal Way.

"It's pretty clear to me that when major election issues come up, if Dean Logan can be somewhere else he generally is," said Reagan Dunn, R-Bellevue.

Dow Constantine, D-Seattle, said the details of Logan's absence weren't that important.

"I think that's a bunch of right-wing blog nonsense," he said. "I think what's important is the answers he gives when he appears before the council."

Those answers have taken on a new importance.

Until Wednesday, the vote-by-mail proposal seemed like a done deal because it was supported by all five members of the council's Democratic majority.

But one of the prime sponsors of the ordinance, Seattle Democrat Bob Ferguson, said he was troubled not only by Logan's absence ("a serious lapse in judgment") but also by information presented Monday about staff vacancies Logan has been unable to fill in his office.

"I have to have confidence that the Elections Department has the resources and staff and the ability to make that change. Right now I'm not sure if I believe that's the case," Ferguson said.

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