SEATTLE – A survey of King County elections workers – under scrutiny for months as Washington state scrambled to resolve its close governor’s race – shows they consider themselves undertrained and overworked and say morale is low.

“Over half the workers were embarrassed to be an employee of the elections office,” said an agency news release on the survey conducted last month by the Independent Task Force on Elections.

“I’m not surprised by this survey; it simply quantifies what we already knew,” said County Executive Ron Sims. “Make no mistake, changes are in the works.”

Highly publicized errors in tabulating King County returns were at the heart of a Republican court challenge to the 2004 governor’s race, won by Democrat Christine Gregoire by 133 votes after three counts. Gregoire’s victory over GOP contender Dino Rossi was affirmed by a Chelan County judge last week at the conclusion of a trial.

Here are results of the survey. Thirty-four of the agency’s 36 full-time employees took part.

•58 percent rated their training as fair or poor.

•61 percent consider themselves overworked.

•82 percent said agency morale is low.

•59 percent rated the agency’s written procedures and manuals as poor or nonexistent;

•59 percent felt pressured by supervisors to produce results in order to meet media deadlines.

Sims said he was heartened that the workers expressed confidence in the expertise of the agency director, Dean Logan.

Fifty-six percent rated their confidence in Logan as high or very high, and 79 percent rated his technical expertise in election law as high or very high.

Logan said the survey highlighted “significant areas of concern. The survey results make it clear there is a lot of work that needs to be done.”

On the plus side:

•91 percent said they felt personally responsible for maintaining proper standards of conduct and compliance with elections laws, and 88 percent believe their co-workers are committed to compliance as well.

•79 percent would feel comfortable reporting election violations to a supervisor or management.

“My staff is as embarrassed as I am about the problems and mistakes made last year,” Logan said in the release.

He said changes are under way.

The county announced this week that Bill Huennekens, election superintendent, has been reassigned to supervise implementation of recent federal voting rules, which require installation of handicapped-accessible equipment at more than 500 county polling sites.