Voters get their say on electing auditor

As reported here, voters in King County will have the opportunity to change the County charter to allow them to vote for an elections auditor. Of course, this has King County Executive Ron Sims' knickers in a knot, since he has had the power to appoint whomever he wished to run the elections department (and we all know how that turned out).

"County Executive Ron Sims, a Democrat whose appointees now manage elections, angrily slammed the plan, saying it is "full of irony, hypocrisy and inconsistency when you look at past statements, actions and inactions of council members.

""I believe this is politically motivated to create doubt about an elections system that has made a remarkable turnaround since the 2004 elections," Sims said. Those elections exposed numerous operational problems and led to months of litigation."

Democrats consistently try to derail anything that gives the voters say over how things are run, believing that voters are too stupid to know what's the right thing to do, so it is up to the Democrats to lead voters by the hand, because they "know better", and Ron Sims is no stranger to this false set of Democrat assumptions. Bob Ferguson (D - Seattle) is usually an exception to this (as he is here), and is the co-sponsor with Reagan Dunn (R - Bellevue).

"Councilmen Reagan Dunn, R-Bellevue, and Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle, announced the plan at a news conference. They said creating the elective office of auditor would stabilize a department that now has vacancies in its top two jobs: records, elections and licensing director and elections superintendent, as well as some lesser positions.

""An elected auditor will provide direct leadership to the elections department and ... increase accountability to voters," Dunn said."

Stability and accountability to the voters are both needed for this department, after the fiasco of 2004, but Sims and the Democrat Council members are opposed to this, as it would take control of the department out of Sims' hands, and give voters a chance at putting someone of their choice in charge of the department, and that takes some of the advantage the Democrats hold in each election away, and they are all in a tizzy about that.

Well, isn't that just too bad?