With partial returns from Election Day showing Lloyd Hara leading the race for King County assessor, a county employee accidentally updated the office's Web site at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, showing Hara as the new assessor.

On the Web site's home page, a message to the public ended with "Lloyd Hara, King County Assessor." Hara's name also appeared at the end of a message to visitors to the site's eSales Search page, which allows the public to view property sales data. And Hara was listed as the assessor on a form for businesses declaring personal property for tax purposes.

Here's a partial screen shot of that eSales Search page:

"I'm just shocked it even happened," said Interim Assessor Lynn Gering.

Hoang Nguyen, the office's IT director, was contrite about the error.

"We were just being proactive in figuring out where we needed to change things, and we accidentally pushed it out to the wrong server," Nguyen said.

The employee likely chose to use Hara's name because of his lead in the partial returns or name recognition, Nguyen said. Hara is a Port of Seattle commissioner and once served as King County's auditor.

The mistake was caught by staff at about 7 a.m. today and fixed, Nguyen said.

"We were just trying to make sure things went smoothly and we just made it worse," Nguyen said.

As of Tuesday night, Hara had about 34 percent of the vote. Behind him is Robert Rosenberger, a former appraiser for the assessor's office, with 29 percent. Elections officials, who still have thousands of ballots left to count, say results won't be certified until Nov. 24.

"We are not making any predictions," Gering said.