Attention: King County voters!!
You may have been surprised yesterday when you discovered a ballot in your mailbox. A ballot? Didn't we just finish electing Obama and returning Gregoire to the Governor's office?
Please don't toss it aside! If you do, or if you choose the wrong name, you're asking for trouble! In King County's very first all-mail election, we have to elect ourselves a Director of Elections, and the person we elect had better be Sherril Huff.
Follow me below the fold for more information...
In their infinite wisdom (that’s snark, in case you didn’t already know it), last year the voters of King County decided to arrange it such that their Elections Director can’t be fired if he or she is incompetent. How did they "achieve" this? Simple -- they made the position an elective office.
Now, you might think that this really shouldn't be something to worry about. After all, under our "top two" primary system, the six names on the ballot will be whittled down to two finalists, and I'll vote for the better one later on. Well, that approach doesn't work this time. The Republican operatives whose initiative forced this office to become an elected one also slipped in a provision that made this initial position-filling a special election. In such elections, whichever candidate receives a plurality of the votes will be elected ... no cutdown to two, no requirement of attaining a majority.
I'm reminded of the 2006 Democratic primary in my Legislative District's House Position 1, also a six-way race. In that one, now-Representative Jamie Pedersen got the nod with 24% of the vote. The same thing could happen here, except that this time we aren't choosing among six fine progressive Democrats. Not by a long shot...
Although the procedure by which we will elect this vitally-important county official—a (very) off-season, low-turnout, plurality-based election—appears to have been designed to baffle the voters into making a poor choice, we are fortunate to have a candidate in the race who shines far above the competition. That candidate is Sherril Huff.
Sherril Huff is, in essence, the incumbent in the race. She was named Director of Elections a couple of years ago when it was (properly, IMHO) an appointed position. As Director of Elections, she has coordinated King County’s efficient and entirely uncontroversial elections ever since. In fact, as I noted on my blog a few weeks ago, King County was, amazingly, the second county in the state to report its final counts in the November general election. Those who recall my lengthy WA-Gov series about our 2004 gubernatorial recount will recall that King was invariably the slowest counter and latest reporter among the 39 counties in Washington.
Sherril Huff is an experienced and highly respected professional in elections administration. Only one of the other five candidates for Elections Director has even the slightest background in running elections, and that other person was fired (and prosecuted) for some shady actions in the darker days of King County Elections. Note that, under this new method, it will not be possible to fire someone who botched the election process as that other candidate did. That's a major reason behind my opinion that electing the Elections Director is a bad idea. Two of the other candidates are, in fact, highly partisan party hacks politicians [guess the party :-)], seemingly more interested in seeing their own names in print and putting the King County GOP in control than in election integrity or technological innovation. At last count, Huff has been endorsed by the Auditors (that is, Elections Directors) of at least 32 of the other 38 counties in Washington. The other six Auditors seem to be sitting on the sidelines at the moment ... they certainly haven’t endorsed any of the lesser candidates.
The only potential problem for Huff is her very professionalism -— she doesn’t have a great deal of name recognition. In contrast, some of the others have plenty of (negative) name recognition, but zero experience or competence related to the position. Facing a short timeframe for the election, it’s essential that the word gets out that Sherril Huff is the right candidate for the position. It’s essential that the voters of King County remember to fill in the oval next to the name Sherril Huff on the ballots they’ve received (or are about to receive) in the mail. And, of course, it’s essential that the voters stamp and mail their Sherril Huff ballots by February 3.
King County’s elections are now in excellent hands. Let’s keep it that way. Vote for, and contribute to (if you can):
Sherril Huff
In case you're interested, a forum on the Elections Director position, sponsored by the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce and moderated by Debbie Berto (publisher, Issaquah Press) and Jim Vesely (editorial page editor, Seattle Times), will take place tomorrow (Saturday) morning at the Golf Club at Newcastle. The agenda calls for half-hour meet-and-greets at 9am and 11am, surrounding a "structured forum" running from 9:30 through 11:00. The Newcastle CC requests RSVPs by email, though I bet they won’t be turning away anyone who shows up unexpectedly.
All six candidates have confirmed their attendance. We’ve already seen, however, that such confirmation doesn’t mean they’ll actually show up. I suspect, however, that La Cucaracha and David (Fists of) Irons are somewhat less likely to duck this one than that earlier forum ... the one where they would have been required to stand in front of known Democrats, in a union hall.