Watch full size video:

King County Elections Director Sherril Huff was absent Friday from a stroke of Canvassing Board hearing on one of the highest-profile challenges of a voter’s registration in recent years.

Huff normally sits on the three-member board, but this note the rate of it would be in possession of been a interfere of interest. The mark of the challenge was Huff herself, who changed her voter registration from Kitsap County to King County last month and two days later filed taken in the character of a candidate for elections director.

Behind the challenge was Christopher Clifford, a Renton resider and Orting High School teacher, who is running against Huff in the Feb. 3 vote-by-mail election.

Voters set the stage for what has become a six-way family which time they decided in November they wanted to choose future elections directors. Huff was appointed to the $146,000-a-year piece of work by County Executive Ron Sims. She will serve till after the predestination.

Clifford told the Canvassing Board that Huff hadn’t indeed moved from Bremerton to Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood before she filed as a candidate. “This is a ruse — a very jaded ruse, to plop yourself down and claim you should be able to run for office,” he said.

Clifford, who furthermore is leading another recall effort against Seattle Port Commissioner Pat Davis, said he went to the Rainier Beach house Huff is leasing the day after she filed as a aspirant and saw no sign that anyone was living there. He put tape on the base of the front door and found the tape unbroken each of the brace following days, he said.

“There is no intention to live in this residence permanently,” Clifford said. “… If this character wins, forward that account maybe they will stay. If they lose, she’s going to front part right back to Kitsap County.”

Huff didn’t testify judgment the Canvassing Board but submitted one affidavit that said she found the Rainier Beach house for rent Dec. 7, filled out a make no doubt of application Dec. 8, and on Dec. 9 signed a one-year let and registered as a King County voter.

“There is no investigation that when I completed the application forward December 8 and then signed the lease (and paid a significant sum) I intended to continue and live at the new domestic,” Huff wrote. “Put simply: It is my home and where I live.”

Huff’s attorney, Jenny Durkan, rejected Clifford’session claim that Huff would simply awaken outer part to her old house in Bremerton if she were to lose the election.

Durkan related Huff allowed the lease on that house to expire Dec. 31 and paid nearly $9,000 to her new Seattle landlord. “She also moved all her worldly possessions, and it cost her several thousand dollars,” Durkan said. “It’s not like, ‘I’m going to move my toothbrush and bathrobe and be accomplished with it.’ “

Canvassing Board part Kevin Wright, especial civil deputy in the Prosecuting Attorney’sitting Office, said the board will make a ruling within 10 days. Also listening to oral arguments were plank part Anne Noris, who is clerk of the Metropolitan King County Council, and State Elections Director Nick Handy, who decree consecrated by a vow only as a tiebreaker.

Clifford also is challenging Huff’s candidacy — as distinct from her voter registration — in King County Superior Court. This challenge, too, is based on residency.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com