The votes are in and counted. Last Tuesday, November 29, Spokane County, in a meeting that ordinarily attracts little notice, certified the results from the November 8th general election. Most local voters thought the results of this year’s general election were settled a couple of weeks ago. News coverage has moved on, even though the results were unofficial until Tuesday’s certification meeting. (You can inspect the certified results here. Use the Command-Find keys [CMD-F] on your computer to locate specific candidates and races.)
At last Tuesday’s certification meeting of the Spokane County Canvassing Board one could still hear local echoes of Trump’s Big Lie, Dinesh D’Souza’s bogus “documentary” 2000 Mules. (2000 Mules was widely distributed locally by an unidentified political operative), Flynn’s ReAwaken America Tour, and, of course, the local Republican Party’s pushing the narrative of election fraud. The most prominent representative of the SpokaneGOP’s effort is, of course, Bob McCaslin, Jr., the losing candidate for Spokane County Auditor and the only candidate to appear as an observer at the canvassing board’s certification meeting.
The certification meeting included a 15 minute Open Public Forum segment at which six people spoke. Five of the six were from the SpokaneGOP asking that the board vote against certifying the election. Matt Hawkins, the Spokane County Republican Party’s state committeeman, requested a revote or hand count of the auditor’s race that McCaslin lost by 1183 votes. To request a “revote” is a preposterous grandstand, but, let’s consider a manual recount. The statutory trigger for a hand recount in a non-statewide election for this particular race would be a difference of only 546, far less than 1183. (See P.P.S. for details.) If Mr. Hawkins were actually convinced that a hand recount would produce a different result he could use the legal mechanism in the RCW to request (within two days of the certification) and obtain a hand recount at his expense. There are no reports that Mr. Hawkins has made such a request. Apparently Mr. Hawkins faith in his suspicion of faulty ballot counting is insufficient for him to risk his money on a recount. (The payment is refunded if the recount changes the result of the election.) [LAST MINUTE UPDATE: The Spokesman reports this morning that McCaslin requested a partial hand recount of the ballots from five precincts in the Eagle Ridge area in which the original count was not in his favor. The partial hand recount will cost him (or his backers) a few thousand dollars. It is uncertain what he expects to accomplish. One wonders if he and his backers are such true believers in the election fraud narrative that they expect a blockbuster reveal of miscounting that would drive a mandated recount of the entire contest.]
Alene Lindstrand, another of the commenters, claimed (among other complaints), in spite of the Risk Limiting Audit, that no meaningful election audit was performed. Ms. Lindstrand is a perennial purveyor of complaint and suspicion, including arguments against fluoridation. Ms. Lindstrand ran for Spokane County Auditor against incumbent Vicky Dalton in 2014 and lost by nearly 18 percentage points in the general election.
The other three GOP commenters raised similar questions and requests, all without evidence. One, a Mr. Tim Kinley, videoed the meeting with his smartphone.
The November 8 general election’s now-certified results in Spokane County (for statewide results click here) show a relatively high ballot turn-in rate for a mid-term (middle of the four year presidential term) election. A total of 222,676 ballots were counted in Spokane County from among 359,764 registered voters (an election “turnout” of 61.9%).
“Ballots counted” and “election turnout” aren’t quite the same. Seven hundred and thirty-five ballots were rejected because the postmark on the outer envelope was after election day (November 8). There’s a lesson here: Do your homework and vote early or, if you’re voting on election day, either deposit your ballot in a drop box before 8PM or pay close attention to the pick-up times on the mailbox in which you put your ballot.
Another reason to vote early is this: 3374 Spokane County voters in this election were sent letters notifying them that if they wanted their votes to be counted they needed to take additional steps to “cure” signature issues. Of those 3374 voters, 49% (all but 1705) voters took the prescribed action to cure their ballot so the envelope could be opened and their (now anonymous) ballot could be entered into the counting system. If you turn in your ballot in the late rush it may take a while to receive the letter notifying you of the problem. When one of the election contests on the ballot is really close political parties obtain publicly available lists of voters whose ballots require curing. The parties match names with other publicly available data that might suggest party sympathy and then make efforts to encourage people to go to the trouble of curing their ballot. Remember that if you turn in your ballot early you can check to see that your ballot has been accepted by visiting vote.wa.gov.
In Spokane County in this November 8 general election the final numbers show that 2443 people’s efforts to vote were rejected either for signature or witness problems that they didn’t (or couldn’t) cure—or on account of a late postmark. In the closest race on the ballot, the Spokane County Auditor’s race, the number of votes separating the candidates was 1183. Given that even if all these 2443 ballots had been cured, 1813 of them (74%) would have to have been votes for McCaslin to make up the difference. The odds of a 74% edge for McCaslin showing up in those cured ballots is vanishingly small. But in a closer election… Moral: Vote early and make sure your ballot is accepted.
One final remark: The election irregularity folks from the GOP conveniently ignore that every “Prefers Republican Party” candidate who ran for a Spokane County-wide office subject to the voting of all the voters in Spokane County, every one of them, other than Bob McCaslin, won their contest. In LD-4 (Spokane Valley), McCaslin’s election conspiracy counterpart, Rob Chase, lost his state representative seat to fellow Republican Leonard Christian. Mr. Christian’s opinion on local election integrity?
“If (the county auditor )is cheating, why are all the county spots Republicans?”…
Christian said he has observed the election process, and though he does not believe it is perfect, it is secure.”
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. The canvassing board is a three-member board made up of a designee from the Spokane’s County Commission, the Auditor’s Office, and the Prosecutor’s Office. This year those designees are Mary Kuney, Randy Bischoff, and John Grasso, respectively. Minutes for the November 29th meeting are here. More details on the canvassing board’s makeup can be found in the minutes for its November 22nd meeting. (Other minutes for the board can be accessed here.)
P.P.S. “If the difference in the number of votes cast for the apparent winner and the closest defeated candidates is less than 150 votes and less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast for both candidates” a hand recount is triggered. In the Spokane County Auditor’s race that is (108,631+109,814)*0.0025=546.