State elections chief finds hot seat as he takes over
OLYMPIA – Nick Handy has taken over as state elections director at an unenviable time: He has to conduct a new partisan primary that likely will confuse and anger voters.
After he weathers that, he’ll immediately have to run the busiest general election in years, with potentially close races for White House, Senate, governor, and control of the Legislature – not to mention five statewide ballot issues.
And, Handy agrees, some voters are still skeptical about the sanctity of the ballot box after the Florida vote-counting controversy in 2000 that decided the presidential race.
Handy was appointed by Secretary of State Sam Reed in May and has been on the job since then, though Reed’s office didn’t make an announcement at the time. He succeeded Dave Elliott, who resigned for health reasons after just a few months on the job. The previous elections director, Dean Logan, moved to a better-paid post as director of King County elections.
Other senior staff in Reed’s office have resigned or retired recently, and one staff member has been activated for military duty.
Reed turned to Handy, an old friend who was his lobbyist during this year’s legislative session.
Reed was a big proponent of a so-called Top 2 primary to replace the state’s popular blanket primary, which had been thrown out by the federal courts. The Top 2 system, like the blanket primary, would have allowed voters to pick their favorite for each office, splitting their tickets if desired, with the top two vote-getters moving on to the general election.
Reed succeeded in pushing the plan through the Legislature, but Gov. Gary Locke vetoed it and left in place a Montana-style primary that lawmakers had tacked on as a fallback position.
The new system requires voters to take only one party’s ballot, though their party choice will be kept private. A Grange-sponsored initiative to substitute the Top 2 model will be on the November ballot.
“This is a significant election for a lot of reasons,” Handy told the Olympian in a story published Thursday.
“One is that it’s the first presidential election since problems surfaced in Florida,” he said.
“The state of Washington has never had problems like Florida, but every state was impacted by the issues that came out of Florida. It’s our job to increase public confidence in the election system.”
Handy said his office has held seven workshops with county auditors to prepare for the new primary, and it will spend $1.6 million on a media campaign to educate voters.
“We have a brand new primary for the first time in 70 years, and we know it’s one not popular with the voters,” he said.
His office, with 15 employees, also is working with counties to upgrade their voting systems. Punchcard balloting will be phased out in favor of touch-screen and optical-scan voting. Federal funds will pay most of the cost.
Handy, 55, will earn $85,000 a year at the elections post.
Before his stint as a lobbyist for Reed, he spent eight years as director of the Port of Olympia. His tenure came to a tumultuous end last December when the port objected to basing his retirement on a number that included an $80,000 balloon payment. He said he has patched things up with the port.
Previously, he was deputy director of the state Office of Marine Safety, executive assistant to then-Land Commissioner Brian Boyle and a deputy attorney general. A graduate of the University of Washington and Willamette University Law School, the Wenatchee native began his legal career with the attorney general’s office in 1975.
He is married to Paula Casey, a Thurston County Superior Court judge. They have two children, Benjamin and Esther.