Voters would be unwise to ratify Walt Washington’s temporary appointment as Kitsap County auditor. He is an export from King County’s notorious elections division, and since his appointment here he has already been personally cited with approximately a dozen public disclosure violations and other discrepancies operating our Kitsap County Auditor’s Office.

He was trained in the culture of Dean Logan, the King County elections director (himself a Kitsap County export in 2001), who presided over the Dino Rossi election debacle of 2004 and within months had negotiated and jumped ship to a safer location in the Democrat-controlled Los Angeles Elections Division.

Logan was cited by a May 2005 no-confidence resolution introduced into the King County Council and was facing a possible federal grand jury investigation for the many infractions for which he was responsible. (Documentation can be easily recovered by a Yahoo or Google search).

Logan had been earlier trained by Kitsap County’s recently retired auditor. What goes around comes around.

The illegalities she defended were serious enough to document with local law enforcement and the Washington Secretary of State, though no subsequent responses were taken. (Information available upon request.)

Appointing a successor official from the same political party shortly before a voter election is a well-recognized technique to promote the appearance of incumbency and, hopefully, gain uninformed voter support.

It would be a shame to fall for this and fail to elect Washington’s highly qualified opponent, John Clark.

The Democrat Party election machine has to go. It’s in Kitsap’s best interest to clean house now and to vote for John Clark, experienced in business, education and government service and who promises to “promote voter confidence by working diligently to ensure creditable, trustworthy, secure elections.

We need that.

KARL DUFF

Port Orchard