WAGOP EIC Election Observer Subcommittee WA State 2024 General Election Report

Educate. Advocate. Mitigate. Activate!

The Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP) Election Observer Subcommittee, under the WAGOP Election Integrity Committee, included Republican Election Observers in several counties during the 2024 general election.

OVERVIEW:

County Auditors must request that election observers be present during the processing of ballots at the counting center. Observers can participate on behalf of a party/candidate. State law also permits observation by the public. Observers are permitted to view ballot processing during elections per RCW 29A.40.100.

Observers monitor the conduct of an election to insure a fair and lawful process. This helps build confidence in our elections. The Republican observers that participated in this effort kept in contact and shared concerns, compared notes, discussed the differences in each county, and possible improvements each county can make. Through this, observers learned that rules and procedures vary significantly from county to county. Some counties allow better observation than others, some are less accommodating.

In addition to in-person election observing, several counties allow election observing via security camera live footage displayed on big-screen monitors outside the counting rooms. Also, many counties offer people the opportunity to observe through a live camera streamed online. Most of these have no sound and do not offer the same experience as one gets from attending the ballot processing in person. We do appreciate this effort, however.

We understand that smaller spaces can limit the number of observers that are able to be present. Some counties have a very small workspace which can accommodate only one or a few people at a time. With that in mind, it still appears that some counties limit observer access and only allow the minimum.

Additionally, some counties require observers to remain too far away to have any meaningful observational oversight. Some counties require observers to attend a training session prior to being allowed to observe ballot processing whilst some have no training, others offer training but do not require it. Some require separate “recount” observer training even if regular observer training has been done. Overall, election observers’ experiences vary widely across the state.

COUNTY REPORTS:

Once again, several GOP county election observer groups had successful drop box observer programs. Pierce County is leading the way as observers are stationed at key locations around various drop boxes, monitoring conditions, making sure drop boxes are not overflowing, proper chain of custody is being followed, that only election workers are touching ballots per RCW29A.84.510, and that ballots aren’t being accepted after the 8 pm deadline. If there appear to be other “helpers” taking voters’ ballots, observers take photos and submit to election officials.

Also in Pierce, an observer noticed ballots in green trays, which means they are ready for extraction and signature verification is already complete. These ballots were spotted on October 22, when no ballots had yet been reported as received. The ballot status report, published by the Secretary of State, doesn’t reflect the date these early ballots were returned, and instead all ballots returned before the 22 nd are marked as received the first day the report is available, even if they were returned a week earlier.

This is the case in all counties and is likely done at the SoS office, not the county elections offices. It is not very transparent and is misleading. If all early ballots show a received date of October 22 , people will assume they arrived on the 22 nd .

Clallam County also has established a drop box observer program, which is wholly supported by the county elections office. Clallam observers noticed that about 50 emailed ballots were being recorded as “received” after election - day per the WA State SoS website. Some were “received” as late as November 21.

In Island County Election Observers were forced to wear masks in the ballot processing room due to a Covid outbreak in the Aug 2024 primary election where 8 of 14 elections officials tested positive for Covid. The Republican Auditor says she wanted to keep her staff safe, but it is questionable if this rule / policy is legal. If observers wanted to participate without a mask they were allowed to stand in the doorway. However, observers complained that their line of sight was limited from that vantage point. The county observers have filed a lawsuit. Of note: A Republican election observer was escorted out of the elections office by law enforcement for violating the policy.

King County observers learned that one of the folds in the ballot was interfering with the presidential race. The fold was being read as a mark by the tabulation software, turning many votes for that race into overvotes. Staff were told to spend extra time folding all of King county’s ballots in reverse to try and flatten them out and decrease the shadow of the fold on that race. This increased the number of ballots requiring review by staff during the adjudication process.

Previously, observers inquired about the test ballots being folded to resemble a more realistic scenario during the Logic and Accuracy test. This suggestion was not taken seriously by the county elections department. However, had they folded the test ballots, they potentially could have identified this problem sooner and had time to make necessary changes.

King County extended their ballot processing hours in order to have two shifts each day, with the second shift ending at midnight. This makes it difficult to cover the entire day with observers. This was done to improve the Clear Ballot system performance. Due to the size of the county, the system starts to “slow down” when both scanning and adjudication is underway. The ballot processing supervisor planned to have ballot scanning during the earlier shift and ballot review at night.

The OmniBallot signature curing app was again in use for people who had a mismatch or a missing signature. This process is not transparent, and observers were not able to watch this process, as it is done on the application/online.

Additionally, the King County OmniBallot portal seems to be flawed, allowing anyone to create a ballot whether or not they are a registered voter. The issue with this is that state law for UOCAVA voters are very relaxed, and if a voter uses the portal to create a ballot and mark that they are UOCAVA, they will not be asked to confirm their identity, their UOCAVA eligibility, and do not need to be previously registered in order to vote. Several other states/counties portals were tested, and none of them allowed the creation of ballots without verifying the voter’s information or eligibility. The King County portal needs to be fixed.

In Skagit County it was reported by several Republican Election Observers that hundreds and hundreds of Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) ballots were being voted “Straight Ticket” Democrat at about a 9 to 1 (or more) rate. These controversial ballots (that are impossible to verify and audit because of lax I.D. requirements) were all done online and sent into the elections office and then printed off and then re-made on new ballots so they could go through the scanner. Despite this massive disparity, amazingly many Republicans and even some statewide candidates still did well and won their races. This troubling UOCAVA trend happened in most of Washington’s 39 counties.

Snohomish County is now including a “hash check” before the Logic and Accuracy testing. A hash check is a method of verifying the integrity and authenticity of data. It involves generating a short string, called a hash value, that represents the content of a file or data. They also have a new facility upstairs from the old office, still being used for voter registration services. The new space allows for plenty of observation opportunities, thus no need to limit the number of observers. Visibility of each process is possible, but in some cases, observers are now farther from the action than they were downstairs. If there are any questions, observers have to wait for an election worker to arrive, as the ballot processing area is behind glass and walls.

In Spokane County it was reported by election observers that the reconciliation report was off by 12 ballots (12 more ballots that were counted than voters credited through VoteWA). Initial research into the precinct-by-precinct vote counts demonstrates that those numbers do not balance either. It needs to be determined if there is a problem with the VoteWA counts or the Clear Ballot vote counting system – or both. Also, in Spokane, it was widely reported that 5,000 - 7,000 ballots were never counted in the 2024 primary election. It appears that once again the US Postal Service bungled this as a delivery truck from Pasco was late to the Spokane distribution center and the ballots were postmarked after election-day. This is tragic as most likely these Southeast Washington hub regional ballots had a high percentage of Conservative votes and if counted would have swung the State Commissioner of Public Lands Race to have Republicans Jaime Herrera Beutler and Sue Pederson make the top two. Instead Beutler and Democrat Dave Upthegrove (who won the recount by only 49 votes ahead of Pederson) made the top two.

This is another reminder that we must ban mail-in voting as the USPS is simply not reliable. Until we do, voters need to be advised to vote their ballots using the drop boxes or in-person at the county elections offices.

It should be noted that the WAGOP mailed out a Republican slate to over 33,000 UOCAVA voters in 38 WA State Counties. However, it is too early to tell if this effort was worth the money as all the data is still being analyzed.

CLARK COUNTY election observers got to witness the LD 18 State Senate Recount that just concluded. Because the margin between the two candidates was 172 votes, a mandatory “machine recount” was required. Elections officials reviewed the write-in votes and the 4,753 undervotes in the race (see article here).

STATEWIDE AUDITS

On the heels of the 2024 primary election, there was a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) “Pilot” Program conducted in a few counties. In the general election the SoS, with the help of the county elections offices conducted a statewide RLA in 20 counties. You can watch the online process of randomly selecting the race to audit on the SoS website. The statewide race that was chosen to be audited was the Lieutenant Governor’s race. Via PRRs from the WA SoS, here is a county list with the total number of ballots that were included in the statewide audit: (these numbers are a “close” approximate, but 3 PRRs netted 3 different sets of numbers).

Asotin – 1, Benton – 2, Clallam – 1, Clark – 6, Cowlitz – 1, Island – 3, King – 24,

Kitsap – 3, Kittitas – 2, Pend Oreille – 2, Pierce – 8, San Juan – 1, Skagit – 1,

Snohomish – 8, *Spokane – 5, *Thurston – 2, *Walla Walla – 1, Whatcom – 3,

Yakima – 2.

*In addition to the above, Mason - 138, Spokane - 82, Thurston – 35 and Walla Walla – 43, each did their own RLA, in partnership with the OSOS.

OF NOTE: The RLA is NOT a True Audit! More Info Here.

Also, for the 2024 general election, the SoS implemented new signature verification audits. The SoS asked each county for a random number sample of rejected signatures. This adds another layer to audit the ballot rejection process, it is a third formal review, as now each county must have a second review before they can reject a voter’s signature. It appears to be a prudent measure.

In most counties, ballot processing and counting continued for the full 21 days allowed after Nov 5 election night. Dragging out the process does not build trust among voters. There is no urgency to get the remaining votes counted. Instead, counties will leave a small number of votes uncounted and only report when required by state law, which is not frequent enough. It would be better if the counties worked with the same urgency through the entire counting process instead of winding it down when counting is not yet complete.

ELECTION DAY ACTIVITY:

Several counties across the state had an increase in the number of people who showed up to the elections office on the day of the election and the day prior to the election. Lines were long; wrapping around the block in some cases. Over 100,000 total ballots were issued in those two days alone. Observers were surprised to see these long lines and wondered how much the removal of the 30-day residency requirement played a role in the increase of people showing up to register and vote on election day.

The concern with people showing up to register and vote at the last minute is that there is no opportunity for these voters to be challenged or even verified by the public. There was an actual recorded case of a newly registered voter who was an RV traveler. Her absentee ballot did not catch up with her in time to vote legally in Florida. Her local friend in Spokane took her to Spokane county Election Office for assistance. They gave her a regular Spokane County ballot, with all the federal, state and local races on it based on her friend’s address but she was not offered a Federal-only ballot. She said that she only voted for President, but both she and her Spokane resident friend expressed concern about potential abuse. Hopefully, her registration can be fixed when she gets home.

SUMMARY:

Election Observation helps keep election workers accountable and the public informed. Observers in some counties had successful experiences and were able to have faith in the process through the transparency of the county elections office; others were left with unanswered questions and out of the loop as to the methods and procedures.

Observation should be fully accessible across the board. Counties who want to foster trust can do so by having an open process and meaningful viewing for observers. Elections should be trustworthy through transparency and not require observers to have to rely on trust with the people working in the elections office.

Respectfully Submitted,

WAGOP EIC Election Observer Subcommittee

Bill Bruch

Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman, WAGOP 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 & 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.

Related Article: WAGOP EIC Election Observer Subcommittee WA State 2024 Primary Election Report