Huff, Clifford trade barbs in Election Office race

King County Elections Director Sherril Huff has a simple message for voters: Keep me in my job because I've turned a problem-plagued election office into a model of openness and accuracy.

Christopher Clifford, one of five challengers who want Huff's job, has an even simpler message: She's a liar.

Even in the rough-and-tumble world of electoral politics, Clifford has been unusually harsh on Huff, accusing her of lying about being a county resident to run for office.

In an election that is largely a referendum on Huff's record, she has attempted to keep the focus on improvements made since she became assistant elections director in 2005 and director in 2007.

Ballots in the special vote-by-mail election must be postmarked by Feb. 3. The nonpartisan election — which isn't preceded by a primary — was scheduled after voters in November decided to make the previously appointed position an elected post.

The other candidates are former King County Councilmember David Irons, state Sen. Pam Roach, former county Elections Superintendent Julie Kempf and former banking-industry manager Bill Anderson.

Irons leads in fundraising, reporting $115,536 in contributions (more than $100,000 from him), followed by Huff with $21,326 and Roach with $6,240 in a combination of her own campaign funds and independent expenditures. Clifford, Kempf and Anderson report no contributions.

"I'm proud of the work that we've done in providing King County voters with 21 successful elections," Huff said. "I'm proud of the fact that we are now in a consolidated facility that was supported by many people."

Improvements reduced the numbers of unexplained discrepancies in ballot accounting from 2,000 in the 2004 election to just 22 last November, she said.

Some critics have quibbled with the latter number, but most acknowledge her office has made significant strides since irregularities in the 2004 vote count fueled the GOP's challenge of Democrat Chris Gregoire's narrow victory over Republican Dino Rossi in that year's gubernatorial election.

Huff ran Kitsap County elections as county auditor from 1979 to 1986, and later served as assistant director of the Washington State Lottery and a Bremerton city councilmember and deputy mayor.

Former King County Elections Director Dean Logan, who worked for Huff in Kitsap County, hired her as his assistant after 2004. County Executive Ron Sims promoted her to director in 2007 after Logan left for an elections position in Los Angeles.

Sims stood beside Huff when she announced her candidacy, saying she "has no equal. ... We've become not the bane and the joke of the nation, we've become the place where people travel to see how elections should be run."

Conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky, a sharp critic of the election office, said that operations have improved since Huff took over but that she has exaggerated the improvement.

On Wednesday, Sharkansky posted internal e-mails that said 49 ballots were "not found" before the Canvassing Board certified a manual recount of a 2006 Northeast District Court judge's primary. The winner of the second spot on the general-election ballot was determined by 27 votes.

A news release at the time, which quoted Huff, said fewer ballots were counted in the recount than in the first count, but didn't mention any ballots were actually missing.

"I don't expect elections to be perfectly accurate, but I do expect election officials to be perfectly honest and transparent about any mistakes that are made under their watch," Sharkansky wrote in an e-mail Wednesday to The Seattle Times.

Huff said she didn't remember 49 missing ballots or if she sat on the Canvassing Board that day. She said she wouldn't expect the board to certify results under the circumstances described in the e-mails without calling for another recount.

She said Sharkansky had done "a very clever job" on his Sound Politics blog of trying to discredit her and said he has failed to correct mistaken reports in the past when fuller information became available.

Huff, who opposed making elections director an elected post, said for months she wouldn't move from Bremerton to Seattle to run for the office. But one day before the start of last month's candidate-filing period she announced she was moving to Seattle and would file as a candidate.

She signed a lease on her new home before the filing period, but Huff said she didn't sleep in the house until Dec. 17 — eight days after she switched her voter registration to King County and six days after she filed as a candidate.

Clifford, a high-school teacher and former restaurateur who has a history of challenging public officials, promptly filed an appeal of her voter registration. (He is also seeking to recall Seattle Port Commissioner Pat Davis.)

"She is a carpetbagger, a Kitsap County carpetbagger," Clifford said. "If she wanted to run for this office, she should have moved to this county and become a resident, not a liar who's faking residency."

Clifford, saying he is running to bring integrity to the elections office, touts his experience as chairman last year of a San Diego land-use advisory committee.

Anderson, who wants to bring to the elections office some of the security methods used in the banking industry, said of Clifford's attacks on Huff in candidate forums, "Every question is turned into a vitriolic tirade against everybody else, but mostly Huff."

Anderson says new equipment must be designed for verifying and counting ballots, saying the current equipment is "fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed."

The county Canvassing Board rejected Clifford's challenge of Huff's voter registration. A court hearing is not yet scheduled for Clifford's complaint seeking to disqualify Huff's candidacy on grounds she failed to establish residency in King County in time.

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