WAGOP Lawsuit Disputing 2024 LD 18 State Senate General Election Ruling
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This is a follow up to my March 13 article: WAGOP Lawsuit Disputing State Senate General Election Finally Heard in Court.
On May 8, 2025, Judge Camara Banfield ruled in favor of the Defense's Motion for Summary Judgment in the case: Matthew Frohlich and Washington State Republican Party Plaintiffs, V Clark County and Greg Kimsey, in his official Capacity as the Clark County Auditor, Defendants (#24-2-04196-06).
This sets a terrible and very dangerous precedent that county auditors are under no legal obligation to remove voters from the voter rolls who have previously reported a change of residence - or for auditors to even update their voter registrations before an election. There may be an appeal…
Clark County auditor Greg Kimsey was sued by Frohlich and the WAGOP for not cleaning up the Clark County voter rolls prior to ballots being mailed for the 2024 Nov 5th general election. The plaintiffs asserted that Kimsey ignored the standard National Change of Address reports he regularly receives and did not update the voter rolls in a timely manner.
Inslee Appointee, Clark County Superior Court Judge Camara Banfield ruled: Having reviewed the parties’ briefing and caselaw cited, this Court finds that the Plaintiff was unable to find any applicable caselaw to support their argument of negligence as applied to the statutes in question and the action of Greg Kimsey. The Court grants Defendant’s joint motion for summary judgement and requests attorneys for the defendants to propose findings accordingly.
The ruling in essence says that counting the votes of these voters from their previous addresses, and allowing them to impact races for which they are no longer constituents, has been clarified to be Washington State law.
In the race, Republican candidate Brad Benton lost by 172 votes with 84,123 total votes cast. Benton has 41,881 (49.79%) votes and his Democrat challenger Adrian Cortes has 42,053 (49.99%) votes.
This now presents a larger opportunity to tackle the flaws of our election system by clarifying where the current interpretation of state law could potentially contradict federal law.
Frohlich, the WAGOP and attorneys are looking over and considering all the current legal options. They are confident this ruling may allow follow-up lawsuits with more favorable courts that could lead to Washington State election law, as interpreted and as written, being ruled federally unconstitutional.
As a reminder, the vote margin between the candidates of 172 votes (.20%) required a mandatory recount (per RCW 29A.64.021); that ludicrous “Recount” was completed Dec 9, where elections officials just looked at the "UNDER VOTES" (the ballots of voters who did not cast a vote in the race).
Bill Bruch
Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman, WSRP Executive Board Member, 5-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 and 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.