Gubernatorial recount puts official on hot seat
But because the recount of nearly 900,000 ballots by his staff members could determine the outcome of the election, the county elections director has become a lightning rod for controversy.
When Logan took over the troubled elections office a year ago, he won praise from both political parties.
But the honeymoon is officially over.
In the past two weeks, Logan and his office have been sued by the Republican and Democratic parties.
And state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance has launched particularly harsh attacks. Vance has accused Logan of opening the door to possible voter fraud by allowing the Democratic Party to deliver signed affidavits from absentee and provisional voters, storing open boxes of blank ballots near boxes of completed ballots and failing to keep adequate track of all ballots.
"I'm not going to attack Dean Logan," Vance said. "But I do know he's a Democrat, and I do know that we've seen big problems, things we're not making up."
Logan still has plenty of supporters, including County Executive Ron Sims, who appointed him to run the Division of Records, Elections and Licensing Services. Sims, who calls Logan's performance "awesome," said he was particularly impressed when the elections chief said on election night that his staffers would count absentee votes through the night.
Since voting ended Nov. 2, Logan and his staffers have been following a steady diet of 12-hour days and seven-day work weeks. "It is starting to wear on us," he said. "I try to stay focused on what it is we're here to do. We're here to conduct this recount and stay as far away from the political elements as possible."
From state to county
Logan, 37, was state director of elections under Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, when Sims came calling.
On their first meeting, Sims said, "I felt as strongly about him for elections as I felt about Dave Reichert for sheriff," Sims recalled. "When Dean Logan sat across from me, I knew he should be elections director."
But when Logan took on his new job, he inherited a mess. The office had come under fire for long delays in mailing out absentee ballots during the 2002 elections. Those snafus led to the firing of Elections Superintendent Julie Anne Kempf and the resignation of her boss, Bob Roegner.
Supporters credit Logan for turning things around quickly.
Under Logan, the 2004 election was much smoother than two years before, despite challenging circumstances. His office handled a record number of voter registrations on a computer system he installed in a presidential election year.
He educated voters on the new primary system, doubled the number of absentee-ballot-counting stations and processed unprecedented numbers of labor-intensive mail votes and provisional ballots.
Members of the Metropolitan King County Council and the Elections Oversight Committee praise him for his openness and management skills.
When half a dozen absentee voters in County Councilwoman Julia Patterson's district didn't receive their ballots last year, she called Logan into her office to complain.
"We fully expected him to try to find some excuse or to rationalize why this had happened, and he did not," she recalled. "What he said was, 'We made a mistake, I'm sorry, I will call them personally and this will never happen again. ... '
"He was so incredibly clear and honest. I have a lot of faith in him."
Bremerton High grad
The son of a Puget Sound Naval Shipyard employee and grandson of a Navy veteran, Logan graduated from Bremerton High School in 1986.
He had planned to go to college. But the temporary job he took in Kitsap County elections office after high-school graduation turned into a full-time job. He later worked as a lobbyist and campaign coordinator for the Washington State Labor Council.
He has taken some community-college classes and completed professional-certification programs at two universities but has not completed a college degree.
During the 1990s, he worked as Kitsap County superintendent of elections, managed the secretary of state's new certification and training program for election administrators, and was elected — as a Democrat — Kitsap County clerk.
In 2001, Reed asked Logan to become the state's top elections official.
Reed said he was sorry to see Logan leave the state office. He called Logan "very smart, very thorough, and a person who I always viewed as having a considerable amount of integrity."
Logan commutes to King County job by ferry from his home in Olalla, Kitsap County, where he lives with his wife, Winnie Flores-Logan, who is deputy chief auditor of Kitsap County, and their two teenage children. His annual salary is $123,404.
All eyes on office
With the governor's race between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi riding, in large measure, on the recount in Democratic-leaning King County, the county's elections office is again under the microscope.
Republican Party Chairman Vance has made much of the Democratic affiliations of Logan and his appointed elections superintendent, Bill Huennekens, accusing Sims of a history of appointing "political hacks" to count votes.
The usually soft-spoken Logan shot back. He said that Republicans, having lost in court, were "reduced to the level of degrading the process."
Logan also has taken heat over the discovery that King County had 10,000 more provisional votes to count than his office first estimated.
Others have complained about restrictions on where political-party observers could stand while workers validated provisional ballots. Logan said he restricted access to protect voters' privacy and avoid distracting workers.
Ross Marzolf, executive director of King County Republicans, said he was "reassessing" his earlier support for Logan because of his handling of observers. "While they may be within the letter of the law in where they can place us," he said, "it's not in the spirit of the law to have an observer where they can't observe."
County Councilman David Irons, R-Sammamish, has said he wants Logan to appear before the council, after all the recounting is done, to answer questions about the election process.
Logan has found it tough to be the object of so many attacks but said he understands that the political parties are just doing what they feel they need to do to improve their chances of winning the governor's race.
"It's a constant battle with yourself not to take it personally, to stay focused on what you're doing," he said. "I think in the end it's going to work out fine."
Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com