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 Director, was filling in for Director Jim Buck, who had started a long-planned vacation on the last day of the recount.
I searched the volume of King County Election's internal emails from that time period which had been disclosed to me earlier. There wasn't a lot of detail about the recount, but I did find this thread from spokeswoman Bobbie Egan to certain senior staff shortly before the recount was certified on Oct. 5.
At 5:12pm Egan sent this email to Barb Delauter, Buck's assistant who would have been assisting Huff that day:
49 not located....Difference of 27 between and LaSalata is still the victor.5:26pm:
Fyi -- not sure how the CB will rule. There is a possibility we don't certify and go do a third search for the 49.5:29pm:
Better start thinking about plan B.
Either way Ottinger could request a manual recount which is likely in this situation.
Stay tuned...
Cb just certified - unanimously.So Huff should have known that 49 ballots couldn't be located, yet voted to certify even though the margin of victory was 1/2 the number of missing ballots? Oh dear.
Then came the press release at 7:33pm:
Results in a manual recount can change for several reasons. During a manual recount, each ballot is pulled, sorted by precinct and then visually inspected before they are hand-counted by about 150 people. Visual inspection could have provided a fluctuation in write-ins, vote totals or other variances.No mention that "49 not located" and that Election staff had no idea how that happened."A small amount of discrepancy between counts is not uncommon. At the end of the day we're still relying on humans to perform these functions regardless if the count is done by machine or manually," said Sherril Huff Menees, Assistant Director of Records, Elections and Licensing Services.
There's no nice way to say this. Sherril Huff lied to cover up a major screw up.
And another curious note. I had requested all the emails written to or by Huff and other senior staff from July through November of 2006. She produced none of her emails for September through mid-October.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 28, 2009 01:19 PM | Email ThisBecause most people are like you were before you came to this site and learned what the local media don't tell you. This is a democrat town and will remain that way as long as the media continue to carry their water.
Posted by: Eyago on January 28, 2009 03:47 PM"These are not the droids you are looking for..."
Posted by: Gentry Lange on January 28, 2009 05:59 PM