County voting chief: Inquiry supports staff
Logan faces a grilling on election errors

By KATHY GEORGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER   14 March 2005

Embattled King County Elections Director Dean Logan has some new answers as he faces another round of tough questioning from County Council members today.

In an interview, Logan revealed that a special internal investigation has found no evidence of the problems he feared most that elections staffers knowingly ignored procedures or intentionally set aside November election ballots so they would not be counted.

"There was no indication that either of those things occurred," he said.

Logan said the county's personnel office has interviewed about 15 employees associated with the 573 absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected last fall because the voters' signatures were missing from the county's computer system.

Logan has said those ballots should have been set aside for later signature verification rather than rejected outright. Ultimately, they were accounted for in recounts of the tight governor's race.

Now that intentional employee wrongdoing has been ruled out, Logan said, the personnel investigation is shifting to less explosive questions, such as how training and coordination lapses contributed to election errors.

The question of wrongdoing came up when Logan first appeared before the council a month ago. Councilman Steve Hammond, R-Enumclaw, had asked him to name workers who made mistakes and to indicate "whether heads are going to roll."

At the time, Logan said it would be inappropriate to name workers or discuss an ongoing investigation.

Hammond said that, as of Friday afternoon, Republican council members had not yet decided what to ask Logan at his second appearance this morning.

  
 
But Republicans are likely to show up in force for the 9:30 a.m. event in the council chambers. "News of his appearance has been spread far and wide," King County Republican Party Director Ross Marzolf said Friday afternoon, shortly after the event was announced.

State GOP Chairman Chris Vance said he expects Logan "to continue to spin and obfuscate and outright lie" about the county's handling of the November election. Vance predicted that Democratic Council Chairman Larry Phillips will shield him from tough questions.

Logan "just needs to answer the old questions, which he's never answered," Vance said. "How many provisional ballots were illegally sent through machines without being verified? How many ballots did they illegally alter with black Sharpie pens? Can you possibly explain these massive discrepancies that exist out there?"

A "poll ballot reconciliation" report released Friday said 348 provisional ballots were improperly counted without first verifying voter eligibility, including from 40 to 96 ballots cast by people not eligible to vote. The report failed to resolve hundreds of discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters signing in at polls on Nov. 2.

Republicans are fighting in court to overturn or repeat the election, which Democrat Christine Gregoire won on a second recount after Republican Dino Rossi prevailed in initial counts.

One of the allegations is that King County elections workers used permanent markers to fill in ovals where voters failed to clearly mark their chosen candidates.

State law allows markings to clarify voters' intent, but it does not allow permanent alterations, Vance said.

Asked about the alleged use of Sharpie pens, Logan said, "I've never heard that question" before.

Responding generally to Vance, he said, "We will continue to be the target of those kinds of politically motivated potshots ... .

"It was a very close race. The law actually contemplates this election contest process. We're cooperating with that process" while trying to improve operations to prevent future mistakes, Logan said.