Rumor has it that Brad Nelson, Elections Director of Pima County, Arizona, is Sherril Huff's first choice for Superintendent of Elections here in King County....
Posted in Sound Politics on March 30, 2009 06:54 PM
After the election debacles of 2004 and 2006, more than enough people signed Initiative 25 to put the question of electing the King County Director of Elections on the ballot. We were told that would be a major step toward...
Posted in Sound Politics on February 4, 2009 06:54 PM
Today's Seattle Times reports on the Elections Director race. The numbers are certainly in Sherril Huff's favor. The laws, not so much. By her own admission, she wasn't living in King County at the time she filed her candidacy papers,...
Posted in Sound Politics on February 4, 2009 09:50 AM
Virtual incumbent Sherril Huff is rolling to a comfortable, plurality election as of this typing. First round of results (reaching 15% turnout as of this typing): Huff - 44.0% David Irons - 19.2% Pam Roach - 16.7% And the three...
Posted in Sound Politics on February 3, 2009 08:22 PM
Sherril Huff's record in recounts is 0 for 2: 2 recounts, and in both recounts the numbers didn't add up. I've mentioned the September 2006 Primary recount: 27 votes separated the winner from the loser, yet 62 ballots vanished in...
Posted in Sound Politics on February 1, 2009 11:55 AM
Sherril Huff sent out this last-minute campaign flyer. The lies in the flyer are as desperate as they are pathetic. But the pattern of dishonesty is sadly familiar. The flyer claims that Huff "administered 21 error-free elections since 2004". Those...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 31, 2009 01:05 PM
Recall the story of Jane Balogh, the Federal Way grandmother who registered her dog to vote as an attention-getting protest against overly lax voter registration standards. Ms. Balogh was, er, hounded by out-of-control prosecutors, who spent more time and effort...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 30, 2009 02:28 PM
Today's Seattle Times report on the King County Elections Director race cites my findings about the bungled 2006 recount, the errors in which Sherril Huff tried to cover up:On Wednesday, Sharkansky posted internal e-mails that said 49 ballots were "not...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 29, 2009 01:10 PM
Last Friday I reported on some apparent discrepancies between the November 2008 Provisional Ballot Reconciliation Report and underlying voter records. The Elections staff responded to my questions. Their remarks are detailed and technical. But for the most part it confirms...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 29, 2009 12:48 PM
More on that screwed up recount in 2006, where the margin of victory in the recounted race was only 27 votes, yet 62 fewer ballots showed up in the recount than in the first count. Sherril Huff, then the Assistant...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 28, 2009 01:19 PM
Pam Roach isn't the only Elections Director candidate to slip up on PDC reports. Sherril Huff also missed the filing deadline for her F-1 personal financial affairs statement. The F-1 is due within 14 days of becoming a candidate, which...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 27, 2009 10:36 AM
A few weeks ago I reported that Sherril Huff had been hit with a federal tax lien and concluded that she lied on a candidate questionnaire when she claimed that she had never failed to pay her taxes. The Seattle...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 26, 2009 12:58 PM
Sherril Huff launched her campaign for Elections Director with this claim:Under Huff's leadership, King County Elections received a national award for its mail ballot reconciliation efforts in 2006. Huff's team used Fortune 500 quality assurance standards, which revolutionized elections to...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 26, 2009 09:55 AM
Today's Seattle Times features a lurid article about allegations made against Elections Director candidate Julie Anne Kempf. Lurid until the punchline at the end of the article which explains why Kempf was never charged with anything:The AG's office decided the...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 25, 2009 03:25 PM
I finally received this Provisional Ballot Final Summary Reconciliation Report from the November 2008 election which was presented to the canvassing board at the certification meeting on Nov. 25. I compared the numbers with the source database records from the...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 23, 2009 06:06 PM
As expected, the Seattle Times editorial board, which has spent the last 4 years "emphatically" arguing against letting King County voters elect our own Elections Director, has endorsed Sherril Huff, the only candidate in the race who also "unequivocally" objects...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 22, 2009 05:42 PM
Elections Director Sherril Huff puts this claim at the center of her election campaign: Staff reports to the Canvassing Board demonstrated continued improvements by elections officials in such areas as inventory reconciliation of ballots received and counted, and voters credited...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 20, 2009 01:30 PM
The scandal surrounding the actions of the King County Department of Elections in the 2004 gubernatorial recount led directly to a citizens initiative to make the Director of Elections an elected position. I personally thought this was an over reaction...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 19, 2009 01:23 PM
Contrary to today's Seattle Times report thatKing County Elections Director Sherril Huff is eligible to run in the Feb. 3 election to keep her job, the county Canvassing Board ruled Thursday.The Canvassing Board ruled no such thing, at least not...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 16, 2009 12:57 PM
You can't make this stuff up. As noted earlier, Sherril Huff claims to have moved to King County on Dec. 9, only two days before filing her candidacy papers for Elections Director. Chris Clifford has formally challenged Huff's residence, claiming...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 15, 2009 07:52 PM
Sherril Huff's King County voter registration has been challenged by Chris Clifford. Huff, a resident of Kitsap County for decades, leased a home in Seattle and changed her voter registration to King County two days before she filed to run...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 12, 2009 10:00 AM
Sherril Huff responded to my post about her (since released) federal tax lien with these comments to the Seattle Times:Huff said the IRS filed the lien because the agency mistakenly thought she had not filed her tax return for 2000,...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 12, 2009 09:38 AM
I called King County Elections yesterday with a trivial request for e-mailed copies of Candidacy Declarations in the Elections Director race. By statute these documents "must be open to public inspection". It should be a no-brainer to immediately fax or...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 6, 2009 10:19 AM
King County Elections Director Sherril Huff submitted this candidate questionnaire to the county Democrats. In answer to: "Have you ever failed to pay any taxes or court ordered judgments?" Huff checked NO. But that appears to be untruthful. In 2007...
Posted in Sound Politics on January 5, 2009 05:50 PM
As the Seattle Times reported on Saturday, State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz hosted a meeting at party headquarters last Tuesday to pressure certain Democrats who were gearing up to run for the non-partisan office to bow out in favor...
Posted in Sound Politics on December 15, 2008 01:03 PM
An interesting phenomenon in the Elections Director race is that Sherril Huff's backers are all of the people who fought tooth and nail to prevent the voters from getting to make this decision -- Ron Sims and the Democrats on...
Posted in Sound Politics on December 14, 2008 08:01 PM
Now that King County voters have changed the county charter so that the Director of Elections is to be elected, the first race for county Elections Director is underway. Three plausible candidates have filed in the race. The most qualified...
Posted in Sound Politics on December 13, 2008 05:51 PM
For the presidential preference primary last week, King County gave out a single ballot for the Republican and Democratic parties. So if you signed on the sheet for one party or the other, when you voted, you could choose to...
Posted in Sound Politics on February 26, 2008 12:47 AM
Unlawfully registered Seattle P-I editorial writer Dorothy ("D.") Parvaz cancelled her voter registration today, mooting a registration challenge, says King County Elections Director Sherril Huff. Perhaps this item in today's Tri-City Herald convinced Parvaz to correct the record: "Prosser man...
Posted in Sound Politics on October 5, 2007 04:21 PM
"Report: County animal shelters "deplorable""The animal shelters run by King County in Bellevue and Kent are "deplorable," with dogs and cats suffering from high rates of disease and inadequate housing, exercise and social contact, according to a report today from...
Posted in Sound Politics on September 27, 2007 06:36 PM
Garth Fell, Assistant Superintendent of Ballot Processing and Delivery since 2004, has accepted the post of Snohomish County Elections Manager (top deputy to County Auditor Carolyn Diepenbrock). Fell's last day at King County Elections is early October. Fell was rumored...
Posted in Sound Politics on September 25, 2007 04:44 PM
The Seattle Times reports on yet another fiasco at King County Elections. Sherril Huff proposed spending $345,000 on VoteHere mail ballot tracking software, but neglected to tell the Council that VoteHere has gone out of business and the product is...
Posted in Sound Politics on September 18, 2007 09:12 AM
State Appeals Court rules in a recent Public Records Act decision (Zink v City of Mesa) that We hold that "substantial compliance" is an incorrect standard by which to judge an agency's compliance with its statutory duties ... The PDA...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 31, 2007 11:30 AM
Seattle Times: "Election-director initiative likely to qualify for ballot" Elections Director Sherril Huff reports 31,000 signatures (of 74,000) have been checked, with 24,000 valid (towards a 52,817 target), and expects to finish this week. Good. The County Council should have...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 20, 2007 11:36 AM
Jason "Zappini" Osgood continues to do terrific work exposing the astonishing senselessness of Sherril Huff and Ron Sims's "very, very good plan" reckless plan for mail-only voting in 2008. After the County Council received strongly negative assessments of the Sims/Huff...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 14, 2007 12:09 PM
The Elections Office still hasn't responded to the request for a progress update on I-24 and I-25 signature verification that I e-mailed last Thursday. (I was asking for some very basic information that could and should be available and released...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 14, 2007 11:37 AM
Last Thursday I sent an e-mail to Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan asking for a progress update on I-24 signature verification -- specifically, how many valid, rejected and duplicates have been counted and as of what date? I also inquired about...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 13, 2007 10:04 AM
Sherril Huff's Top Ten Reasons For Not Verifying The I-25 Petitions In a Timely Fashion. 10. "Just give me two more years until my state pension is fully vested, then they can do whatever they want with the office!" 9....
Posted in Sound Politics on August 8, 2007 12:23 PM
King County Elections has now had the petitions for I-24 and I-25 for 28 days. According to their status update, they won't start on I-25 until they're done verifying I-24. At this point, they're less than halfway done checking I-24...
Posted in Sound Politics on August 6, 2007 10:45 AM
The King County Council yesterday shitcanned Ron Sims's plan for mail-only voting1, after the Council's outside independent expert recommended against Sims' plan to purchase and install new computer systems and to implement forced-mail voting using existing systems. Two weeks ago,...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 31, 2007 09:09 PM
The Elections Office has now had the I-25 petitions for verification for 21 days. If they had used a legally defined statistical sample, I-25 should have been qualified by now. Instead, they've chosen to spend an estimated $50,000 extra in...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 30, 2007 08:41 AM
The Times reports on yesterday's County Council hearing: "County gets mixed advice on mail-vote technology" First the council heard from Ellen Hansen, Citizens' Elections Oversight Committee chairwoman and former elections manager, who said it would be too risky to install...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 17, 2007 10:00 AM
I heard an (uncomfirmed) rumor that Sherril Huff has tapped Assistant Superintendent Garth Fell to be the next Superintendent of Elections. The Superintendent position has been vacant since Bill Huennekens was demoted two years ago. Worth noting that Garth Fell...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 16, 2007 08:57 PM
Live on KCTV:Julia Patterson: So there really is no Plan B to move to all vote-by-mail for 2008? Sherril Huff: Not for 2008 Julia Patterson: So if the new equipment is not certified, there is no plan for a mail-only...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 16, 2007 12:15 PM
Do watch the Council hearing on the vote-by-mail transition plan, now on KCTV This is the most screamingly funny Council hearing I can recall watching. 1) The partisan Democrat Councilmembers are insisting with a straight face that mail-only voting is...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 16, 2007 12:02 PM
The Seattle Weekly article on I-25 quotes the senseless anti-I-25 arguments of Councilman Bob Ferguson. Ferguson says he supports the charter change, but wants to postpone the election until 2009, owing to the recent appointment of Sherril Huff as Elections...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 13, 2007 11:46 AM
The King County Council is scheduled to vote this afternoon to confirm Sherril Huff's appointment as Director of Elections. I expect Huff to be confirmed (and they wouldn't have put it on the agenda if she didn't have the votes),...
Posted in Sound Politics on July 2, 2007 01:14 PM
Australian shepherd Duncan MacDonald is still registered to vote, and owner Jane Balogh, who registered Duncan as a protest against lax voter registration standards, will take her protest to court:Balogh last week said she planned to plead guilty. She changed...
Posted in Sound Politics on June 29, 2007 11:08 AM
The King County Prosecutor is considering criminal charges against the ACORN voter registration activists who allegedly submitted over 1,800 fraudulent registrations last October. Good. Curiously, when the ACORN story was first reported last October 21, the only controversy mentioned was...
Posted in Sound Politics on June 25, 2007 11:40 AM
Last night's Downtown Seattle Republican Club panel discussion on I-25 was quite interesting. The program, moderated by Phil Bevis, featured four Republican elected officials: Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman, Secretary of State Sam Reed, State Rep. Glen Anderson, King County...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 18, 2007 09:17 AM
King County Elections seems to prefer not to talk about double voters. Last October Secretary of State staffer Pam Floyd sent this e-mail to the counties asking about follow-through on double voters:1. How many double voters have you sent on...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 17, 2007 03:30 PM
I-25 is well on track to gather enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, provided that the campaign continues to raise enough money to finish the signature drive. Time for a motivational poll. Have you donated to I-25?No way!...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 15, 2007 11:34 AM
The Downtown Seattle Republican Club is hosting a panel discussion this Thursday evening about I-25, the King County initiative to elect the Elections Director. Panelists include Secretary of State Sam Reed and State Auditor Brian Sonntag, State Rep. Doug Ericksen,...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 14, 2007 05:36 PM
According to this Sep. 29, 2006 e-mail from Sherril Huff to staff, Huff's reaction to a proposed workplan from IT staff was:spending a fitful night remembering all the possible problems we can experiece. Probllems that jeopardise the ability to have...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 14, 2007 11:58 AM
More poor judgment at the Elections office -- using public resources to advertise its bureaucrats. And the result also reveals poor judgment and questionable ethics over at the P-I. Spokeswoman Bobbie Egan wasn't just providing information to the public, she...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 11, 2007 12:45 PM
I'm pleased to discover that King County Elections staff not only read Sound Politics, but recognize it as a credible source of information and even act on our reports to investigate election problems and improve processes. No, really. But read...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 8, 2007 11:46 AM
Last year I made records requests for all work-related e-mails sent to/from certain King County Elections officials during July - November 2006. On Friday I received a CD that partially fulfilled this request. Unfortunately, many of the requested records were...
Posted in Sound Politics on May 7, 2007 01:16 PM
From today's Kansas City Star: JOHNSON COUNTY | Election commissioner will stay The county won't be losing its election commissioner to the Seattle area. Brian Newby said he had applied for a similar job in King County, Wash., and was...
Posted in Sound Politics on April 20, 2007 10:15 AM
Ron Sims has named Assistant Elections Director Sherril Huff-Menees [rhymes with "Buff My Knees"], aka She-Ron, to be the placeholder Elections Director until I-25 passes this November and enables the voters to elect a non-partisan Elections Director in February. She-Ron:...
Posted in Sound Politics on April 19, 2007 04:21 PM
Republican elections observer Tim Borders tells me that senior Elections staff informed workers at the canvassing facility today that King County would transition to all vote-by-mail for the 2007 Primary. The announcement was made by Interim Elections Director Jim Buck...
Posted in Sound Politics on November 16, 2006 11:28 AM
Horsesass David Goldstein has publicly outed and named a Seattle resident and published how that individual voted on his secret ballot during last September's primary election. In his most recent post he dumps on Tim Borders of SEA 43-2064. The...
Posted in Sound Politics on October 7, 2006 07:06 PM
Oops. When the Democrat majority on the King County Council approved mail-only voting last week, they were nominally relying on Ron Sims' representations that the Elections section had produced a plan for the transition. But responses from Elections and the...
Posted in Sound Politics on June 26, 2006 11:52 AM