King elections director may move from appointed to elected position

If voters decide Nov. 4 they want to elect the King County elections director, they won't have to wait long to exercise that right.

Passage of Charter Amendment No. 1 would lead to a February vote to pick the first elections director.

First introduced by former state Rep. Toby Nixon as Initiative 25, the measure is a response to the contested 2004 governor's race, when King County's sloppy handling of some ballots led two independent advisory groups to recommend that the elections director be elected.

In Washington's 38 other counties, elections are managed by an elected auditor or elections director. In King County, the county executive appoints the elections director. Under King County's complicated two-step process currently in effect for citizen-initiated charter amendments, voters were asked last November whether they wanted to put Amendment 1 on this November's ballot. Fifty-seven percent voted yes.

"I think that the people made it very clear when they overwhelmingly passed Initiative 25 that they want this office to be directly accountable to the people and not buried in the county administration," Nixon said.

But Becky Cox, Denise Smith and Virginia Gunby, members of a League of Women Voters of King County committee that reviewed the proposal, oppose direct election of an elections director, saying the position requires specific experience and skills. An appointed director — unlike an elected director — can be immediately replaced by the county executive in the event of poor performance, the women wrote in the county voters pamphlet.

During the I-25 debate last year, Metropolitan King County Council member Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle, who supported the concept of electing the elections director, opposed the initiative on grounds that the first director shouldn't be elected in a special February election without a primary to narrow the field of candidates.

The voters-pamphlet statement in favor of the amendment was written by Nixon and council members Reagan Dunn and Jane Hague, all Republicans.

Another measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, Charter Amendment No. 4, was proposed by the King County Charter Review Commission to give the County Council authority to establish by ordinance professional qualifications for elections director and assessor, which is an elected position.

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