Washington State 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.
In the 2022 General Election, the Spokane and King County Auditors both chose to do a RLA. A RLA checks a tiny sample of selected paper ballots against the results counted by electronic ballot scanning machines to verify the results of the election.
These are not genuine "audits" and are so bad that they are not just Sham audits but truly Scam audits.
According to the WA Secretary of State, a RLA is a post-election audit that ensures election results match what the voters selected.
In Spokane County, lo and behold just as in the 2022 primary, the 3rd Legislative District Position 2 Race was somehow once again "randomly" selected by the County and / or the SOS for the general election. We don’t know who, how or why the LD 3 Pos 2 Race for the RLA was chosen because elections officials refused to tell elections observers. Just as in the primary, the numbers were completely ridiculous! It was to be an "audit" for this race to make us feel confident that every one of the nearly 50 races in the 2022 general election in Spokane County were fair and honest...
Through the ARLO Software Algorithm Program, a "random" sample size of 129 total countywide ballots was determined to be "audited" out of about 222,676 ballots counted (about a 0.00058% sample size).
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 within and incubated by the left-of-center Center for Democracy and Technology, whose major donors include large leftist foundations, including George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society. Hmm…
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.”
But when it came to conducting the actual audit, Spokane CO. Election Observers noted that only "a few" ballots (of the total 129) were chosen to "audit" out of the approximate 60,200 total ballots tabulated in the actual LD 3 (Pos 2) race. They also reported the ballot log and cast vote records (CVR) information was transferred by WI-FI email correspondence to ARLO workers in Colorado.
If all of that was not bad enough, there were also 4 known discrepancies in the audit. Two of the ballots did not have a readable jpeg on the top of the ballot, and two more ballots had issues because election employees pulled the incorrect ballots to audit. 4 issues out of 129 ballots are a 3.1% (1 in 32.25) error rate... This is a massive unacceptable error rate percentage and violates The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) standards. But I guess that is good enough in Spokane and WA State SOS elections...
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 Sec. 301 (5) States: “The error rate of the voting system in counting ballots (determined by taking into account only those errors which are attributable to an act of the voter) shall comply with the error rate standards established under section 3.2.1 of the voting systems standards issued by the Federal Election Commission which are in effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
Also, as in the primary, Spokane election observers were not allowed to have a copy of the 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 questions when they asked for clarification or more information.
QUESTION: Why would you audit ballots from all over the county OUTSIDE the 3rd LD for a 3rd LD race?
OF CONCERN: Besides the obvious lack of transparency used with their RLA, Auditor Dalton chose to eliminate the *Random Batch Audit and only use the Risk Limiting Audit for Spokane County.
* The current "Random Batch Audits" (RBA) being used in 38 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) requires checking the results for one race by randomly selecting 3 precincts or 6 batches for the audit. RBA do nothing to verify if the ballots themselves are fraudulent.
Very interesting that in the Spokane Auditor race, well know and prominent (high name ID) 4-Term GOP State House Rep. and Candidate, Bob McCaslin was down about 1,000 votes the last two weeks of the election before certification.
During counting season, despite Republican voters voting late and holding their ballots en masse, McCaslin never made up any ground, falling 90 votes shy of a mandatory recount with 218,552 votes counted. This was a countywide race against a known longtime corrupt 4-term incumbent who GOT TO OVERSEE AND CERTIFY HER OWN ELECTION, where Republican Tiffany Smiley easily won by about 9 points and nearly 20,000 votes.
A similar phenomenon happened in the State Representative Pos. 2 - Legislative District 4 race where popular GOP incumbent Rob Chase somehow lost his race by 1,329 votes, after winning the primary.
In King County the 2022 RLA numbers were even more crazy. The 9th Congressional Race was "randomly" chosen in a “pilot program” where 239,363 votes were counted, a grand total of 59 total ballots were picked to "audit." Of the 59 ballots ONLY 12 were in the CD 9 Race itself or about a 0.005% sample size, the other 47 ballots were in districts outside the CD 9 race (part of the 894,300 total ballots counted countywide).
QUESTION: Why would you “audit” ballots from all over the county OUTSIDE the 9th CD for a 9th CD race?
* The only good news is that King County elections (unlike Spokane) also did a Random Batch Audit; still not much of an "audit," essentially a recount of a very small percentage of the total 894,300 ballots tallied.
No one should take these RLA seriously as being true audits. These are not legitimate audits and are a complete joke, shams and are an absolute scam to the general public that is being misled by the SOS, Counties and Democrat Operative media.
OTHER ISSUES: By definition and design, the RLA is supposed to be preceded by an Audit Trail of the Election System. There is none provided.
OF NOTE: According to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) website and via PRR, both Spokane and King County's Clear Ballot Group 2.1 Voting Systems Software configuration were NOT certified by the EAC at both the federal and state levels for any of the 2022 elections. This violates RCW 29A.12.080, RCW 29A.12.101, and WAC 434-335-060.
WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE? Washington State is one of several states in the country where Cast Vote Record (CVR) data is not available to the public. CVR data would allow 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.
IMPORTANT: These types of Risk Limiting "Audits" are not genuine audits and do nothing to verify if the ballots themselves are counterfeit!
It is very apparent that many of the RCW's and WAC's are intentionally written vaguely by Democrat controlled lawmakers and administrative agencies to reduce transparency. It is sad that the Secretary of State, County Auditors, and the State Auditor Association do not care enough about transparency for our elections, and would rather have fake sham "Audits" in our state!
How long can we continue to trust an election system and administrators that use terms like "Audit" when there is no real true Audit?
In this new Marxist Banana Republic is there any wonder voters are distrusting the election process and the officials that oversee, determine the rules, and administrate our sacred elections.
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.
Related Articles / Videos Links:
Audio Podcast EP. 110: Washington State Sham and Scam Election “Audits” That Are Not Audits…
THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT - Voting System Standards
FEC Accuracy Requirements - Voting System Accuracy
Spokane County 2022”Risk Limiting Audit” Sham
Election Integrity Scorecard - Washington State Ranks #45 out of 50
How to Conduct an Election Audit Through Public Record Requests