King County's election superintendent is leaving his post following a court challenge of November election results that revealed problems with the voting process in the state's most populous county.

Bill Huennekens will step down as superintendent effective July 11, the county said in a statement today. He's been reassigned to supervise enactment of recent federal voting rules, which require installation of handicapped-accessible balloting equipment at more than 500 county polling sites.

Huennekens did not immediately return a call seeking comment today.

Republicans who challenged Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire's slim November victory in court focused their attention on Seattle-centered King County, a Democratic stronghold.

GOP challenger Dino Rossi's challenge of the governor's race was dismissed last week, but the trial exposed some flaws in King County's election process.

Nicole Way, the county mail ballot supervisor, testified that she raised concerns last spring about the county's inability to track ballots. Way also said she and an overseer agreed to submit an inaccurate report to the county canvassing board, showing that all absentee ballots had been accounted for though they had not.

Huennekens testified that he didn't know in advance about the allegedly falsified mail-ballot report.

He also testified about other county elections problems, such as unexplained discrepancies in vote totals and provisional ballots being fed directly into vote-counting machines on Election Day without proper verification.

King County Executive Ron Sims, who recently proposed a $22 million election center and asked the county council for $650,000 to hire more election workers, said Huennekens' experience will help the county navigate federal election reforms.

"This is a great match of skill and experience to a real need," said Dean Logan, the county's elections director.

Huennekens worked as a policy analyst in the state election division before he was appointed to the county post in fall 2003.

County officials said they plan to conduct a nationwide search for a replacement.