King County Elections Director Sherril Huff
One of the stoopidest, stoopidest things local voters have done over the 11 years I’ve been covering local politics is to make the King County Elections Director an elected office. This is a position that demands a professional who knows how run elections, not a politician who knows how to run for them. And while it is putatively a nonpartisan office, we all know that’s bullshit.
The last person we want running King County Elections is a director with a political agenda, allegiance, or ambition.
Fortunately, disaster was averted back in February of 2009 when the appointed director, Sherril Huff, won a special election against a six-person field that included the likes of Pam Roach and David Irons Jr. (Irons actually came in second!) And the reason why you’ve heard so little in the press about Huff ever since is that she has done such a damn fine job. Which is why it worries me to read the press release that Huff is retiring:
King County Elections Director Sherril Huff will not seek re-election as King County Elections Director. She had planned to run for a second full, four year term but will now retire for personal and health considerations. Huff, who has held the position since 2009, issued the following statement:
“It is with some sadness that I made this decision. I love my job, my team of dedicated professionals, and the work we do to ensure transparent, efficient elections for the 1.1 million voters in our state’s largest County. I was looking forward to continuing this service, but after consulting with family, friends and colleagues, I am making the right decision to step down after this year.
I’m particularly proud of the advancements we have made in ballot tracking, improving technologies to speed counting and processing, and improving accessibility through vote by mail, drop boxes, multi-language voting materials, and other efforts to increase participation.
I know I am leaving the office in a strong position as a state and national leader, and will enjoy the remaining months in office.”
Huff deserves a ton of credit for restoring confidence in the office in the wake of the controversial 2004 election. So my hope is that Huff has a qualified deputy in the office who the political establishment rally behind awfully damn quick before politics and personal ambition have a chance to corrupt this race. I don’t want a political ally—I want an elections professional. And so should you.
Much to the Republicans’ dismay, Washington is a “voter intent” state; but there is still plenty of room for an elections director to suppress the vote in subtle and nuanced ways. We could tighten up on the signature verification standards, leaving thousands more “challenged” ballots out of the count. We could pull back on our multilingual voter outreach efforts, reducing turnout in immigrant communities. We could scale back on the number of drop boxes in communities of color and on college campuses. In the wake of several elections in which the late ballots broke hard to the left, our new elections director could support the Seattle Times’ incessant call for moving the ballot deadline from postmarked by Election Day to received by Election Day.
There is plenty of opportunity for mischief. Or, the new director could follow in Huff’s methodical footsteps by focusing on improving and speeding the elections process.
Low profile races like this tend to fly far under the radar—voter turnout for the 2009 special election in which Huff first won office was only 22 percent. But considering that fair and impartial elections are the heart of our democracy, in the long run this could end up being one of the most important races on the November ballot.
If you know who her hand-picked successor is, why not tell us? If this were on the up-and-up, why wait until filing week to drop out? Why not do an investigative piece on things Sherril Huff has not done, insteaf of a puff piece? For instance, the 46th Dems asked her to put a drop box on every college and voc/tech school campus–about 22–when there were only three drop boxes. Vans really don’t do it. And why allow only five days between filung and the due date for the Voter’s Pamphlet for candidates to get their statements in, including our endorsements, forcing us to hold endorsements meetings this weekend? Did you know she won’t update them after the primary? How about only three locations for voters with disabilities to access machines? No scandals is a low bar.
I don’t have any inside information, but I would say the new Deputy Director, Julie Wise. should be the leading contender, political experience aside.
Julie is smart, personable, young and one of the key managers in KC Election’s Phoenix-like rise after 2004. She’s been with Elections over ten years and has the right stuff.
The only reason the 2004 election was controversial is because the Republicans ginned up a lot of fake controversies about it. It was simply a close election, period, marred by a few errors of the sort that occur in virtually all elections, and their guy lost after a hand recount of the ballots because, well, because Gregoire got more votes. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.
Every day, then-King County GOP chair Chris Vance held a press conference in the parking lot outside the building where the initial recount was being conducted. He read from a script. Vance never set foot inside that building and didn’t know what was going on in there. Everything the GOP mouthpieces said about that election was pre-scripted, and none of it was based on what was actually happening. They told the world what they wanted the world to believe, and it was all a pack of lies. I know, because I was there as a designated observer for the whole thing from start to finish.
I was standing next to Dean Logan when the result of King County’s manual recount was announced. At that point, Gregoire led by 8 votes; the rest of her 129-vote margin came from the King County Canvassing Board, which reported later. The GOP’s handpicked Republican judge in Chelan County expanded that margin to 133 votes by throwing out 4 of Rossi’s votes — that’s what the GOP got for their $2 million of legal fees. The entire GOP propaganda push about that election was one great big pathetic loser’s whine.
I spend most of my time over in tea-party country now. I heard a local opining just last week that she thought mail-in paper ballots were rife with fraud. Somebody at the county office where the ballots were opened could just cross off the bubble for one candidate and fill in the bubble for his/her opponent. I expressed my doubts and said there was so evidence that this had ever happened, but she was not convinced.
@1 I have no idea if she has a hand-picked successor, let alone who it would be. But I’d prefer a hand-picked technocrat over a career politician in this office.
Why weren’t the votes counted correctly the first time? Why didn’t the first recount match exactly the initial count? Why did another recount not match the first two counts exactly?
Well RR, 3-3/4 mail trays (~750) ballot envelopes were misplaced in a ballot cage hidden by piled junk until a county councilman raised hell about his ballot receipt not showing up on the ballot tracker.
That’s not a minor mistake.
@6 Are you really asking these questions, or are you just being sarcastic?
Apart from the additional ballots that were added to the count—the so-called “Phillips ballots” mostly—the variance between the counts was actually far smaller than the tabulation error rate the academic literature suggests is typical for optical mark-scan technology. Rossi led the first count by 261 votes, the machine recount by 42 votes, and excluding the Phillips ballots, Gregoire led the hand recount by 10 votes. Out of about 3 million cast. That’s a tabulation error rate of only .009 percent.
Recounts almost always add to the tally as over-votes and under-votes are resolved according to the visible voter intent.
If anything, the statewide manual recount proved our elections system to be remarkably accurate and fraud-free.
“If anything, the statewide manual recount proved our elections system to be remarkably accurate and fraud-free.”
I’m sure you feel that way, Goldy. The person you wanted won.
@9 I’ve probably written about this more extensively (and more authoritatively) than anybody else. The race was a statistical tie—the margin too far within the error rate to know for sure exactly which candidate was the choice of a majority of voters. That said, Gregoire won by the rules, fair and square.
There was almost zero evidence of voter fraud, and while there were errors in election operations statewide, no evidence that these errors benefited one candidate or the other. And despite these well publicized errors, the error rate was far below the predicted error rate.
Any race that comes down to a couple hundred votes out of 3 million is going to look suspicious to the losing side. I understand that. But it doesn’t make the suspicions true.
Plus the GOP Us Attorney looked into it with a team of FBI agents and determined there was no wrongdoing in 2004. But screw facts right?
@10,
Hmmm, maybe you’ll get to see the other side of the situation some day when some Republican yahoo defeats one of your progressive Democrats by 133 votes.
I surely hope that happens because I’d like to see how you and the HA gang react.
(Bear in mind, of course, that I won’t be voting for either a Democrat or a Republican in any future election. I have no dog in the fight between Dems and Reps – I just like to watch the bickering.)
@12 It is my observations that county auditor and elections offices in Washington run the fairest elections in the country, and King County is the fairest and runs elections to the letter of the law.
I will be satisfied with any final result until really convincing and specific evidence on chicanery is made available, and elections here are run as transparently as the law allows.