September 7, 2023 Election Integrity Update by Bill Bruch
Until July 2023, the public could get any WA State county’s most updated list of registered voters via Public Records Request. E.g., for Skagit County it would normally take between 3 hours to 3 days to have the list emailed from the elections dept. The list is constantly being updated each day in all 39 counties.
However, now the public is prohibited from getting these daily updated lists. The whole process is now centralized and controlled by the state due to new state law 5459 in coordination with the Secretary of State (SOS). If you want a county registered voter list, you will only get a monthly update on the first of each month. 30-day windows are now plenty of time for nefarious actors (undetected) to add or remove "registered" voters if needed in an election, even as a safety back-up “credit line” - which according to many data analysts is happening all around the country.
NEW LAWS THAT ELIMINATE HONEST AND TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS
We should not be surprised about this lack of transparency. Last year Stuart Holmes, the WA State SOS Deputy of Elections, amended WAC 434-335-260 (effective July 2022) making 3rd party audits impossible: Decertification of voting systems and vote tabulating systems. To read:
(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 if the county auditor does have a third-party audit? Then…
(ii) those pieces of voting equipment will be considered no longer secure or reliable to use in subsequent elections. And it will be treated as a security breach under RCW 29A.12.180 and the office of the Secretary of State can decertify the use of the system or component.
In other words, our voting systems are now closed to the public, just trust us…