Questionable Clark County "Dismissed" Voter Challenges
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Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey, who has been in office for 26 years, has recently chosen to summarily dismiss all voter challenges despite the completed packages being fully compliant with state law requirements for submission.
State law RCW 29A.08.840 and RCW 29A.08.810(1)(c) specifically states what County Auditors must do upon receiving a challenge in the preliminary stage. However, instead of publicly posting the challenges, Kimsey is formally “dismissing” them and has also chosen to ignore the law by avoiding public visibility and accountability into ongoing election integrity issues related to bloated and dirty voter rolls in Clark County.
Within the last 30 days, 45 voter challenges from 7 different residents in Clark County were submitted to Kimsey and his staff. The challenges that Kimsey is hiding, refuses to publicly post, and has automatically dismissed include:
Voters who moved out-of-state, many of whom left decades ago
Voters actively registered to vote in multiple states
Voters who moved out of the county to elsewhere in the state
One duplicate voter in Washington State
Illegal aliens improperly registered to vote by the DMV and receiving ballots
Each voter challenge included a signed affidavit from the challenger or current resident at the address to provide clear and convincing evidence to its credibility even though, as of 2023, the above is no longer legally required as supportive documentation.
Deceased Voters:
Additionally, in the last nine months, several concerned citizens identified and submitted a total of 23 deceased voter names to Kimsey. These voters were actively registered to vote in Clark County but have been dead for as long as 20 years, with local ballots having been mailed year after year. More than half of them were dead for 12 or more years! But Kimsey still refuses to remove these “Voters” from the Voter Rolls.
In Washington State, three methods are used to identify deceased voters. The Secretary of State receives copies of death certificates and compares the names to the voter rolls, the county auditors use government agencies and obituaries to confirm voter deaths to update the voter rolls, and ERIC has a “Deceased Report.” However, the combined methods are obviously and woefully insufficient to keep the voter rolls clean and ensure election integrity for the general public. These ballots can also result in potential voter fraud.
Ongoing Election Integrity Issues:
Kimsey has not been without controversy related to numerous errors performing his job over the years.
In October 2021, Kimsey mailed 2,120 ballots with major errors to Camas, WA residents that incorrectly listed Evergreen School District candidates instead of Camas School District candidates. The ballots had to be corrected, reprinted and mailed.
In early 2024, a referendum initiative was generated in Clark County to require election integrity improvements. Although it fell short of the required signatures to put it on the ballot, it still brought public visibility to many of Kimsey’s concerning issues.
In October 2024, ballot drop boxes were vandalized with incendiary devices in Oregon and at Fisher’s Landing and Clark County. A fire suppression system in the Washington ballot box did not work and thereby damaged or destroyed over 448 ballots. No one has yet been apprehended or arrested for the ballot box vandalism. Prior to the incident occurring Kimsey refused to add security cameras on ANY of the 22 ballot boxes in the county, nor in the office where ballots are counted.
After the vandalism incident he attempted to blame the County Council for not approving funding for cameras. But Councilwoman Karen Dill Bowerman made public that Kimsey had never requested funding from the Council for surveillance cameras. The County Council subsequently awarded Kimsey $5.2 million in funds to renovate the election offices, but no requirement for security cameras in the ballot counting area and on 22 ballot boxes in the county was specified.
Additionally, on March 13th, Kimsey will be attending a hearing in Clark County Supreme Court because he has been sued by the Washington State GOP and Matthew Frohlich for not cleaning up the Clark County voter rolls prior to ballots being mailed for the November 5th election. The plaintiffs assert that Kimsey ignored the standard National Change of Address (NCOA) reports he regularly receives and did not update the voter rolls in a timely manner.
The lawsuit contends that thousands of ballots were mailed to non-eligible voters who had previously moved out of Legislative District 18 before ballots were mailed and thereby affected the race results between Republican Brad Benton and Democrat Adrian Cortes. Cortes won the race by a slim margin of 172 votes, and his win directly contributed to the Democrats having a super majority in Olympia allowing them to pass any proposed bill they want.
A canvassing team went to over 600 addresses to verify voter residency and obtained signed affidavits and documentation from over half of the addresses attesting to their findings for each address. The documentary evidence accompanying the lawsuit will result in the judge determining if Kimsey neglected to uphold his duty to keep the voter rolls clean, and if the race results from November 5th should be overturned. This may warrant a new election in Legislative District 18.
Voter Roll Maintenance:
Washington State is a mail-in ballot state which uses a non-government organization which provides the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) system to manage voter rolls. ERIC was founded in 2012 by liberal election activist and former attorney with the Department of Justice, David Becker.
Numerous Republican-led states have withdrawn from ERIC in the last several years due to its partisan leanings, ineffectual reporting, and its refusal to adopt basic reforms about personal protections of confidential voter data. As a result, ERIC membership continues to decrease, falling from its peak membership of 34 states to the current membership of 24.
Per its website, ERIC uses four standard reports meant to scrub voter data for accuracy: Cross-State Movers, In-State Movers, Duplicates, and Deceased. If ERIC was performing accurately and effectively, the incorrect voter data as discovered by ongoing voter challenges would not be necessary. In Clark County 370,082 people are actively registered to vote but 43,000 have never voted, even as long as 45 years ago!
Most notably, ERIC does not care who is voting illegally (foreign nationals or illegal aliens). Their rules state, “Under no circumstances shall the members transmit any record indicating an individual is a non-citizen of the U.S.” WA is an automatic voter registration state and claims to “lower barriers to registration and only enrolls eligible citizens.” But this is simply not true because Washington does not require voter ID to vote and illegal aliens have been found on the voter rolls.
ERIC also has no mandate to require its 24 member states to clean up their voter rolls. Instead, they are “strongly encouraged” to request ERIC’s voter updates at least once a year.
Alternate Technology Sources
Will Washington State’s Secretary of State ever consider switching to a different voter roll maintenance program? With the advancement of today’s technology and alternative voter maintenance databases, perhaps it’s time.
ERIC is obviously outdated, inefficient and ineffective as evidenced by the several local voter challenge examples identified above, but it is highly unlikely in a tightly run Democrat state that the SOS will exit from ERIC. However, new U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, recently filed charges against New York State and its Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner. Washington State could also be targeted soon. Like New York, Washington is a sanctuary state allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses, with automatic voter registration.
Bill Bruch
Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman (5th year), WAGOP Executive Board Member (5th Year), Skagit County GOP Chairman (9th year), 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 and 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.
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Bill - have you heard of Stop Bogus Ballots, formerly known as Omega4America? Using fractal technology they are able to compare the voter roll info with the property tax records to identify ballots that are being sent out to addresses that do not meet the requirement of a voters residence.
https://www.stopbogusballots.com/
I reached out to Omega4America when I first learned of them, and at that time they were working with the swing states to identify the anomalies within those states. I was working on cleaning up the voter rolls within my county at the time (2023), and relayed their info to my auditor. He found it interesting. but said he would like to discuss it with SOS Hobbs to see his office would consider it. And I am sure that the SOS would not want anything of sort looking at the voter data.
I had asked about the costs involved with their services, but never was able to get a number.