In Yiddish, the word Luftmensch (literally âman of airâ) means an impractical, ungrounded person. Thatâs an apt description for the three King County Election officials whose disconnect from the practicalities of ballot counting led us to this weekâs election trial in Wenatchee. The trial should help expose the meltdown at the elections office and the importance of putting it in the hands of sturdier folk.
Running an election is a complex endeavor of industrial engineering. An affinity for detail and numbers is a plus. The prototypical Elections Man-of-Air was revealed last week to be one Garth Fell. Fell testified at his deposition that he earned a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from the UW, but admitted he couldnât remember âthe exact yearâ he graduated. The UW says he graduated in exactly 1997, but whoâs counting? Fell, whose title is Assistant Superintendent of Ballot Processing and Delivery, also admitted he never counted the exact number of ballots he delivered and processedâwhich is exactly why the election is still unsettled and the subject of this weekâs trial.
Fellâs staff had evidence of hundreds of uncounted and/or unexplained absentee ballots prior to certification. Republicans allege the final discrepancy was a net 875 more absentee ballots than voters. But Fell falsified the numbers in a Mail Ballot Report to show that all absentee ballots were properly accounted for. (I earlier concluded from documents that this report was falsified. Its story has now been confessed in depositions and is a central feature in the trial). Fell gave the Mail Ballot Report to his supervisor, Superintendent of Elections Bill Huennekens. Huennekens, a former community college political science teacher, never managed anything as complicated as a one-million-voter elections department before. His office bookshelf contains a copy of Lyndon Johnsonâs biography Path to Power. Johnsonâs path apparently included a stolen Senate primary in 1948. But that was before the public could post spreadsheets on the internet showing there were more ballots than voters. Huennekens made the mistake of approving Fellâs Mail Ballot Report even though he knew the numbers were faked.
Huennekens presented the report to his boss, King County Elections Director Dean Logan, and the rest of the canvassing board. The razor-thin governorâs election was certified, in part, by relying on the falsely perfect Mail Ballot Report, even though Logan should have known better. Logan later testified he didnât know whether the election results were accurate within Christine Gregoireâs 129-vote margin of victory, shrugging off the possibility that his department helped install the wrong governor with the ethereal comment that the election system âwas not designed to contemplate razor-thin election results.â
The Democrats counter there is no 875-ballot surplus, only incomplete records. Logan, Huennekens, and Fell could have settled this question in November simply by recounting ballot envelopes and poll-book signatures. But they didnât bother to get the numbers to work and they believed they could get away with it. The price was an avoidable multi-million-dollar trial, and damage to public confidence in elections. Whatever the outcome of the trial, these three airheads need to go.
Stefan Sharkansky founded the local conservative politics blog www.soundpolitics.com
