Lloyd Hara, a Seattle port commissioner and candidate for King County Elections director, reportedly plans to keep his part-time Port Commission seat if he is elected elections director, numerous sources say.

State law stipulates only that a candidate's name can't appear twice on a single ballot. Because the elections director position is on the ballot in February and the port position comes up in November, the two positions would appear on separate ballots. State Public Disclosure Commission spokeswoman Lori Anderson says the state has no "position or jurisdiction to decide" whether Hara can hold both a King County and a port position; neither a port spokesman nor the King County Prosecuting Attorney's office could speak to the legality of holding both jobs at once.

There is some precedent for holding both a state and a local office. Tim Sheldon, a state senator from Potlatch, ran for Mason County commissioner in 2004 and won, and Pam Roach, a state senator from Auburn (whose name is also on the list of likely candidates for elections director), ran for King County Council in 2003 and lost.

However, Hara's case would be different in one key respect: As elections director, he would be overseeing his own election. Under Washington State's "incompatible offices" doctrine, a person can't hold more than one office if "the functions of the two offices are inconsistent," such as "where one office is subordinate to another." That same doctrine was raised—unsuccessfully—in a complaint against Sheldon in 2005.

The elections director job would pay substantially more than Hara's Port Commission position—$146,000, compared to about $6,000. Hara did not return calls for comment.

Sherril Huff, the current King County Elections director, announced Tuesday that she's running to keep her position, contrary to earlier reports—a story I broke on The Stranger's blog on Monday. Although Huff currently lives in Kitsap County, making her ineligible to run for a King County position, her campaign spokeswoman, Lesley Rogers, says she just signed a lease on a house in Seattle and will officially move to King County before the filing deadline of Friday, December 12.

Also running: former port commissioner Alec Fisken, former King County Council member David Irons, former elections director Ellen Hansen, high-school teacher Chris Clifford, ex–county council chief of staff Ross Baker, unsuccessful secretary of state candidate Jason Osgood, and recent UW graduate Ted Maroutsos.

According to King County Elections spokeswoman Megan Coppersmith, the election, which will be the only item on the ballot in most of King County, will cost the cash-strapped county between $2.6 million and $3.3 million.