11:29 AM PDT on Thursday, May 19, 2005

Associated Press

SEATTLE - King County's absentee-ballot supervisor has testified that she collaborated with her boss when she filled out a report that falsely showed all ballots were accounted for in the November election, The Seattle Times reported Thursday.

Nicole Way is the first employee to link an upper-level manager with a practice that failed to meet state ballot-auditing regulations. In a deposition Friday, she said she and assistant elections superintendent Garth Fell agreed to the misleading report because officials didn't know how many absentee ballots were returned by voters.

By law, counties must reconcile the number of absentee ballots returned by voters with the number of ballots accepted or rejected. Way's report showed perfect reconciliation because it simply added the number accepted and rejected to calculate ballots returned.

On Thursday morning, however, Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said that ballot reports have always been created that way and that there was no falsification.

Egan said that any discrepancy between the numbers shown on the report and the actual number of absentee ballots was an oversight, not an intentional effort to mislead.

Dozens of absentee ballots were misplaced and the votes not tabulated during the November election. The ballots were never counted as accepted or rejected.

King County's elections practices have come under criticism largely because last fall's gubernatorial election was so close. Dino Rossi, a former Republican state senator and a real estate investor, won the first count and machine recount, but Democrat Christine Gregoire, formerly the state's attorney general, won a final hand recount of 2.9 million ballots by just 129 votes.

Republicans are challenging the result in Chelan County Superior Court. They say they have identified voting discrepancies in King County and across the state that should invalidate Gregoire's victory.

Way testified as part of that case. She said county Elections Director Dean Logan and Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens were aware that a newly installed computer was unable to give a precise count of ballots returned, but she did not suggest that they knew how the report was prepared.

Elections officials declined to comment to The Times on Way's testimony.

"That's something that's part of my deposition as well," Fell said. "I'd let that record speak for itself when it comes out."

Fell, who was deposed one day before Way, will answer more questions from lawyers Friday.

King County elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said Logan and Huennekens also would not comment. "This is part of the election contest, and we must respect that," Egan said.

Way has been suspended with pay during an investigation into problems with the handling of absentee ballots.

She testified that she and Fell agreed that adding together the number of ballots accepted and rejected was "the only thing we could do" to come up with a ballots-returned number. "I believe he was sitting at my desk when we were filling it out, and we discussed it then," she said.

Secretary of State Sam Reed has called King County's ballot report "appalling" and "totally unacceptable."