Again in 2023, more Spokane County Sham and Scam Election "Audits" that are not audits...
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After the 2022 August Primary Election, I reported about the Sham Risk Limiting Audits (RLA) being done in Washington State, and most specifically in Spokane County.
According to the WA Secretary of State (SoS), a RLA is a post-election audit that ensures election results match what the voters selected.
In the 2022 General Election, the Spokane Auditor chose only to do a RLA and no other type of audit. To no one’s surprise, again in 2023, their Auditor chose to only do a RLA to verify that the election races in Spokane County were legitimate.
Just as in the 2022, the numbers were completely ridiculous! In 2023 the Spokane County Ballot Measure No. 1 election was chosen to “audit.”
Through the ARLO Software Algorithm Program, a "random" sample size of 27 ballots was determined to be "audited" out of a total 155,159 ballots counted county-wide, a 0.000174 % sample size.
This is supposed to be an "audit" to make us feel confident that every one of the 152 races in the 2023 general election in Spokane County was fair and honest...
These are not genuine "audits" and are so bad that they are not just Sham audits but truly Scam audits. A RLA checks a tiny sample of selected paper ballots against the results counted by electronic ballot scanning machines to verify the results of an election.
Arlo is open-source software designed to perform a RLA after an election. Arlo features an algorithm connected to the ballots from the election, and the software program can tell the elections officials which ballots to pull to "audit" the election.
OF NOTE: In Nov. 2019 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it would partner with VotingWorks to pilot the use of Arlo in the 6 key battleground states during the Nov. 2020 election. VotingWorks is a leftist non-profit provider of voting machines and open-source election (selection) verification software.
VotingWorks was created by the left-of-center Center for Democracy and Technology, whose major donors include large leftist foundations, including George Soro’s Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Gee…what could go wrong, when in 2018, the DIRECTOR at VotingWorks, Ben Adida tweeted “F—k Donald Trump and all his enablers,” and, in the same year, called the Republican Party “rotten to its core.”
Also, as in 2022, Spokane election observers were not allowed to have a copy of the detailed RLA report to see the composition of the RLA process. The election observers were not allowed to review the mathematical formulas supporting the RLA, and not given answers to most of their more technical questions when they asked for clarification, nor were they allowed to be shown calculations on how the race and candidates were determined.
QUESTION: How can you “audit” 27 ballots from one election and then say, based on that one RLA for that one election, that the other 151 elections were all good???
PROBLEM: Just as in 2022, all Cast Vote Record (CVR) data and images from the RLA were made available privately via password and EMAILED to the ARLO RLA Team in Colorado to evaluate the process, showing the Election System is connected to the internet.
ANOTHER PROBLEM: Washington State is one of several states in the country where Cast Vote Record (CVR) data is NOT available to the public.
MORE PROBLEMS: Besides the obvious lack of transparency used with their RLA, the Spokane Auditor chose to eliminate the Random Batch Audit (RBA) and ONLY use the Risk Limiting Audit for Spokane County.
OF NOTE: The current "Random Batch Audits" being used in 38 (minus Spokane) of the 39 counties are also not true "audits" and only look at a very small percentage of ballots in a race. In many WA State Counties, it is 6 batches of about 50 ballots per batch (300 ballots total). RCW 29A.60.170 (3) checking the results for one race by randomly selecting 3 precincts or 6 batches for the audit.
IMPORTANT: RLA’s and RBA’s are not genuine audits and do nothing to verify if the ballots themselves are counterfeit!
OTHER ISSUES: By design, the RLA is supposed to be preceded by an Audit Trail of the Election System. There is none.
Given the above, it makes one wonder how the newly elected Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown aka Sandinista Lisa - Who openly supported the Sandinistas and who is a well known devout Marxist - legitimately won the 2023 mayor race against a well-liked and well known incumbent…
WHY NOT ALLOW LEGITIMATE AUDITS? WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE? CVR data would allow piece of mind for an easy and simple audit of each election. They are digital records of all the votes for candidates and measures for the ballots cast in an election.
It is very apparent that many of the RCW's and WAC's are intentionally written by Democrat controlled lawmakers and administrative agencies to reduce transparency. It is sad that the SoS, County Auditors, and the State Auditor Association do not care enough about transparency for our elections and allow fake sham "Audits" in our state!
We should not be surprised about this lack of transparency. Last year, conveniently just before the elections, the SoS amended WAC 434-335-260 (effective July 2022) making 3rd party audits impossible:
(i) County auditors shall not provide physical, electronic, or internal access to third parties seeking to copy and/or conduct an examination of state-certified voting systems, or any components of such systems including, but not limited to: Voting software and systems, tabulators, scanners, counters, automatic tabulating equipment, voting devices, servers, ballot marking devices, paper ballot printers, portable memory media devices, and any other hardware, software, or devices being used as part of the voting system.
And also made several very troubling amendments to the Washington Administrative Code including (effective June 25, 2022) changing the definition of a CVR, WAC 434-261-114:
(5) "Cast vote record" or "CVR" means a record of all ((votes)) voter markings produced by a single voter on a ballot card, presented in electronic form, and is defined as a ballot in accordance with RCW 29A.04.008.
And mandating the destruction of Risk Limiting Audit CVR Data voting records by county auditors within 10 days following election certification:
WAC 434-261-116 Preparing for a risk-limiting audit.
(10) Copies of cast vote records used during the risk-limiting audit will be destroyed no later than 10 days following county certification.
How long can we continue to trust an election system and administrators that lack transparency and use terms like "Audit" when there is no real, true audit?
Is there any wonder voters are distrusting the election process and the officials that oversee, determine the rules, and administrate our sacred elections.
PLEASE VOTE IN 2024 - IT IS YOUR DUTY AS A CITIZEN! AND MAKE SURE YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS ALL VOTE. It is the ONLY way to begin to fix our broken election system and to replace the current Marxist Banana Republic governing officials.
Bill Bruch
Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman, WSRP Executive Board Member, 4-Term Skagit County GOP Chairman, Citizen Journalist, Blogger, Business Owner, “2021 Citizen Activist of the Year” award by the Olympic Conference, 2020 WA State House Representative Candidate, Former Council Member, and WA State 2016 RNC National Convention Delegate.
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WA State Sham and Scam Election “Audits” That are not Audits
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