Sims appoints assistant director to head county elections office

Sherril Huff, assistant director of the King County elections office, will become its director, King County Executive Ron Sims said today.

"There isn't time for a learning curve, and there clearly isn't time to have someone learn this over the next four to five years, particularly when you have a person incredibly capable who is already working for you," Sims said at a morning press briefing.

Huff's appointment requires approval by the Metropolitan King County Council.

Huff, 61, previously worked for eight years as the Kitsap County elected auditor and has worked in the King County elections office for two years.

The position has been open since former elections director Dean Logan resigned in July to become deputy registrar in Los Angeles County. Jim Buck has filled the position in the interim.

The job could last less than a year. Citizens for Accountable Elections, led by former Republican state Rep. Toby Nixon in Woodinville, are collecting signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot that would make the director's job an elected position. If voters approve the initiative, candidates would run in February and a new elected auditor would take office in March.

Before then, the county is planning an ambitious transition to all-mail voting for the spring election. The office wants to make the change before the presidential election in fall 2008.

The county also plans to consolidate all its election operations into a single building in Renton, an effort aimed at preventing the types of problems experienced in the 2004 election.

In the close gubernatorial election that year, Logan and the office were widely criticized after a lawsuit revealed that staff lost, and didn't count, hundreds of absentee ballots. Since then, oversight groups say the office has made many improvements to its ballot-tracking system, the voter-registration database and the organization's culture.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com