More at stake in primary election than outcome of races

The industrious hum coming from King County's elections office is supposedly — gee, do you think? — the sound of election workers doing their jobs, trying to stay out of the newspaper.

Next Tuesday is showtime for the elections office and King County Executive Ron Sims. One sizable mistake and voters will have a cow, a large and deserved one. Sims' re-election is on the line, though not because he drew a stellar opponent in Republican County Councilman David Irons. He didn't.

This is Sims vs. Sims. Voters, reasonably, expect the executive to learn from his mistakes and run an efficient election operation.

Usually an off-year primary such as this would be low-key. Sure, there are a few fascinating races for Metropolitan King County Council, Seattle City Council and Seattle School Board. Turnout will be roughly 30 percent of registered voters, compared to 83 percent in the November 2004 election which included the governor's race. But there is nothing humdrum about this for election officials or Sims.

In the aftermath of last year's visible election troubles in King County, a task force recommended a list of improvements, including a requirement that a SWAT team of experts observe the primary and take charge in time for the general election.

What happens Tuesday and in the following days of vote-counting matters a lot. Smooth is the goal. Boring is ideal.

Some glitches are predictable in a volume business. Election officials in every county will send ballots to dead people and felons, as they did last election. Every county election office will send ballots to the wrong address. Voters have responsibilities too. It's not election officials' jobs to come to your house and determine which day is moving day or if your eldest child just moved to New Zealand. With 70 percent of voters casting ballots by mail, voters demand, and get, a huge amount of service from the elections office.

Sims says his office has become proactive, working with obituaries in the newspapers and contacting courts on a regular basis to clear voter rolls of dead voters and felons.

All that aside, King County cannot end up with batches of uncounted ballots in Styrofoam sandwich containers or nooks and crannies of voting machines. Every legitimate ballot must be counted.

My guess is Sims has a contingency plan though it hasn't been stated. He might keep Dean Logan, elections director, if the primary election is efficient, and the group of experts monitoring the process says things look OK. There are tsetse flies with longer attention spans than journalists.

But one really big mistake — make that, a mistake that isn't melodramatic whining from Republicans eager to elect Irons county executive — and it could be the final straw. Even Seattle Democrats will want to punish Sims.

Irons says he is aware of a dozen citizens, curiously his own supporters, who received duplicate ballots or ballots for deceased relatives. He plans to wait until after the primary to make an issue and wasn't certain how big an issue to make. Sims says the county's vendor sent duplicate ballots to more than 200 voters, the county recognized the mistake and called voters to tell them to file just one ballot.

Logan, who came to the job highly recommended by everyone, didn't cause election problems. The task force examining the office determined Logan had essentially two jobs: managing elections and managing a snake pit of office culture that has been dysfunctional for many years.

Logan was adept at the technical part of running the election but less successful managing the bizarre office culture. Several staffing changes have been made and that could make things run better.

Though there may be limited interest in actual primary-election results, a burning question is, will the elections office get its act together?

I called the elections office Monday this week seeking an absentee ballot. I forgot I will be out of town Election Day. OK, so I am part of the problem. A pleasant, on-his-toes gentleman answered, made a few computer-clicking sounds, put me on hold, got back to me, and the ballot arrived yesterday.

It is a small step but one that suggested somebody is cracking the whip. Voters in King County need to know it was cracked soon enough and hard enough to restore voter confidence.

Joni Balter's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is jbalter@seattletimes.com