County weighs oversight plan for elections
Proposal would make citizens committee permanent

By GREGORY ROBERTS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER   29 March 2005

In the aftermath of yet another troubled election, the King County Council is considering the creation of a permanent citizens committee to oversee how the county handles voting.

"It's abundantly clear that more reforms are going to be needed," Councilwoman Jane Hague said yesterday.

Hague and fellow Republican Councilwoman Kathy Lambert are proposing the formation of the committee, which would examine problems in the November 2004 election and recommend improvements, and then report annually to the council on the work of county election officials.

The panel would be similar to the Citizens' Election Oversight Committee that was set up by the council in July 2003 after foul-ups in elections in 2002 and 2003. But that was a temporary committee, and it disbanded after issuing a 158-page report in May.

The performance of King County election officials has come under renewed scrutiny because of mistakes in the 2004 election, which included an astonishingly close governor's race. After losing to Republican Dino Rossi in the initial machine tally by 261 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast, and in a machine recount by 42 votes, Democrat Christine Gregoire pulled out a 129-vote victory in a hand recount.

The GOP is suing to set aside the results of the election. The trial, in Chelan County Superior Court, has not begun.

In tabulating nearly 900,000 votes, King County officials have acknowledged:

Nearly 660 provisional ballots were counted without the required validation. Provisional ballots are given to voters at polling places if their names do not appear on the rolls there, though they may be registered elsewhere.

Election workers mistakenly excluded 566 valid absentee ballots from both machine counts because they failed to check the voters' signatures adequately. A state Supreme Court ruling led to inclusion of those ballots in the hand recount after the signatures were verified.

  
 
Workers overlooked 20 absentee and two provisional ballots placed in the side compartments of voting machines. Officials included only the provisionals in the hand recount, because information on the ballot envelopes established they were cast on election day.

In addition, King County prosecutors have said nearly 200 felons were illegally registered to vote, and they are investigating hundreds more allegedly illegal registrations. Two voters are under investigation for casting absentee ballots issued to their dead spouses, and one or more voters may have voted twice.

Gregoire rolled up a 150,000- vote plurality in King County.

The earlier citizens committee was formed after more than 150,000 absentee ballots were mailed late in November 2002, some polling places ran out of ballots in a Highline School District election the following April, and 1,800 absentee ballots were mailed late in a countywide election the next month. Those mistakes led to the departure of the county's top two election officials.

The committee recommended 116 improvements, and in August the council mapped out a schedule for adopting them. Most of the recommendations have been implemented, the Hague-Lambert proposal says.

The earlier, 13-member committee included representatives of the state and county Democratic and Republican parties, the League of Women Voters, the Municipal League, the secretary of state, a school district, the Chinese community and two ordinary citizens.

The new committee would comprise a similar membership, with a non-voting representative of the secretary of state and only two ordinary citizens.

The council's staff estimates the committee could require $40,000 in its first year if it hires a consultant, and possibly $10,000 annually after that.

The council will act on the proposal later. In a brief discussion yesterday, Democratic Councilman Dwight Pelz urged its sponsors to consider scaling back the committee's mandate, which he suggested would require expertise that only a high-ranking, full-time election official could provide.