County election workers 'embarrassed'

Half the election workers in King County are embarrassed to work in their department, which suffers from low employee morale, poor internal communications, inadequate training, excessive workloads and an atmosphere of fear, the workers said in a survey released yesterday.

"My staff is as embarrassed as I am about the problems and mistakes made last year," Election Director Dean Logan said in a statement put out in response to the survey.

"The survey results make it clear there is a lot of work that needs to be done," he said, adding that moves are under way to address the issues.

Logan actually came out relatively well in the survey, with 19 of the 33 respondents expressing either a high or very high level of confidence in him.

The anonymous survey of the 36 full-time election workers was conducted during the past several weeks by the independent task force that was appointed by King County Executive Ron Sims to review the department in light of foul-ups in the 2004 general election.

The department, which counts one-third of the votes in the state, came under intense scrutiny when Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire finished nearly tied in the governor's race. Gregoire was declared the winner by 129 votes, but only after a hand recount of the more than 2.8 million ballots cast statewide.

Rossi sued to overturn the result, and he put election errors in King County at the heart of his legal challenge. They included tabulating hundreds of provisional ballots without the required verification of voter eligibility, overlooking 116 absentee ballots until it was too late to count them and failing to reconcile ballots cast with the voters voting.

But Rossi lost in court early this month, with the judge rejecting GOP claims of fraud and corruption in the vote counting in King County.

"We have a culture and climate in our elections division that is simply unacceptable," Sims, who appointed Logan in 2003, said in a statement on the survey. "Make no mistake, changes are in the works."

Sims, a Democrat, is running for a third four-year term in the fall against GOP County Councilman David Irons, who said yesterday the survey points the way to needed reforms.

"As much as this is a bitter pill we need to swallow, let's go ahead and swallow it and do something about it," Irons said.

One change announced earlier this week and highlighted yesterday by Logan was the demotion of the No. 2 official in the vote-counting operation, Superintendent of Elections Bill Huennekens.

Huennekens fared poorly in the survey, with 75.7 percent of the respondents reporting their level of confidence in him as low or very low.

Among other results from respondents to the survey:

53.1 percent describe their morale on the job as poor.

72.7 percent say internal communications are poor.

40.6 percent say their training is poor, and 58.1 percent say the manuals provided them are poor or nonexistent.

60.6 percent say that are overworked or very overworked.

60.6 percent said they don't think they can raise concerns with supervisors without fear that their comments will be held against them.

41.4 percent say the department is significantly worse off than in January 2002.

But 90.3 percent of the employees said they took personal responsibility for good conduct and compliance with election laws.

The survey release also included anonymous comments from some workers.

"I think the director (Logan) and the superintendent (Huennekens) are very intelligent regarding election law and very naive about elections in King County," one wrote.

Another said, "I have a tremendous respect for Dean Logan, and I think that it would prove to be a grave mistake if he were forced out."

Other comments were critical of Logan's leadership.

Many of the problems spotlighted by the survey have also been identified by the task force, which in coming weeks will draw up its recommendations for Sims.

P-I reporter Gregory Roberts can be reached at 206-448-8022 or gregoryroberts@seattlepi.com

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