Bar Code Blunder

Was a letter from King County Elections director Sherril
Huff
denouncing alleged statements by secretary of state candidate Jason
Osgood part of a conspiracy by his opponent, incumbent secretary of
state Sam Reed, to sabotage his election chances? That depends on whom
you ask.

On Wednesday, August 13, Huff sent a memorandum to the King County
Council informing them that Osgood had falsely claimed, “at local
public meetings as well as editorial boards,” that King County ballots
contained bar codes that allow elections staff to trace how individual
citizens vote. “King County has never endorsed any technology that can
directly link a ballot back to the voter,” Huff wrote. In 2007, the
county council passed legislation banning the use of identifying bar
codes.

Huff’s memo might have languished in the obscurity of county
government, if not for one agitated County Council member. At a meeting
of West Seattle’s 34th District Democrats last Wednesday, council
member Dow Constantine, citing Huff’s letter, objected to a proposal to
contribute $1,000 of the district’s budget to Osgood’s campaign.
District vice chair Tim Nuse recalls that, “with a majority of the
members not really knowing” Osgood, the district “voted against giving
him money.”

In his own defense, Constantine says, “I’d just received a
memorandum stating very clearly that [Osgood] is giving out false
information that there are personal identification marks on King County
ballots.”

Osgood and his supporters, in response, say he never made any such
claim. “Of course King County does not use the voter identifying bar
codes,” Osgood says. In a post on the blog Washblog, Jeff Upthegrove,
the brother of state representative Dave Upthegrove (D-33) and the
person who made the motion to give Osgood $1,000, called Huff’s claims
“entirely false.”

So who’s telling the truth? Huff and state elections director Nick
Handy, the original source of the information, say they are. Handy says
constituents had been calling his office, “very upset that there were
bar codes on their ballots [that] could be traced back to determine how
they voted.” Because some of those calls came from King County, Handy
says, he contacted Huff, who sent out the memo in response. Huff says
she didn’t bother to contact Osgood directly “because I didn’t state
any names directly” in the memo.

According to Osgood’s supporters—including, now, Constantine,
who calls the whole thing a “misunderstanding”—Huff and Handy are
trying to harm Osgood’s reputation. “Some of the folks at King County
Elections and the secretary of state’s office are a little hostile
toward Osgood,” Upthegrove says. According to Nuse, Osgood’s supporters
see the letter as “essentially a smear campaign that came from Sam
Reed’s office and eventually filtered down” to King County
Elections.

Osgood’s own public statements on bar codes are mixed. On the one
hand, in a radio interview readily available on YouTube, Osgood
emphatically denounced Reed for “put[ting] a bar code on our ballots
that allows government officials to determine how we voted each and
every time.” On the other, Osgood wrote a letter to Constantine last
year thanking him, as the county council member who sponsored the bar
code–banning legislation, for “proactively protecting our secret
ballots.”

Because Osgood moved forward in Tuesday’s top-two primary, the 34th
District Dems will have ample opportunity to right what may or may not
have been a wrong. “I’m sure that the unanimous endorsement of Mr.
Osgood, in which I participated, will ultimately lead to financial
support as well,” Constantine says.

So far, Osgood has raised $16,500 to Reed’s $345,000.

barnett@thestranger.com