Ballots Found. Job Lost?
Don’t you hate it when you lose your keys and waste an entire morning looking for them, only to find 93 uncounted ballots instead? Well, that’s the feeling down at King County Elections as ballots continue to show up in the darndest places.
The revelation of these found ballots has King County Elections Director Dean Logan under fire. Republican Council Members Reagan Dunn and Steve Hammond both sent him letters asking for his resignation. They must have had fun writing those, because they also wrote one to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez asking him to investigate the governor's election. In a letter, which Gonzalez will no doubt detain for questioning, Dunn wrote, “We do not know whether widespread voting by unqualified voters or the unprecedented number of processing errors was a consequence of misfortune, willful neglect or orchestrated conduct."
The seven Democrats on the council endorsed a proposal for a complete audit of the department, and some of them are beginning to show signs of frustration with Logan. Council Member Julia Patterson told the Seattle Times, “This new revelation of these absentee ballots begins to shake my confidence a bit.”
For now County Executive Ron Sims is standing by Logan, the man he hired 19 months ago to help fix problems in the department.
Meanwhile in Chelan County Judge John Bridges has set May 23 as the starting date for the trial in the governor’s election lawsuit.
