09/02/2022 Clark County, WA
In today’s episode of The Biggest Lie, we once again visit Auditor Greg Kimsey’s public statement on Facebook that, in a single paragraph, sums up his entire political platform. In this statement, we can see the mechanics of dishonesty in full view, as likely passed down through talking points and memos from the State level. We’ll always provide you a copy of his statement in its entirety, so nothing in this series can be taken out of context.
Let’s begin.
Sentence number 4.
Kimsey says,
“In addition, the chain of custody is tested by reconciling the number of ballot envelopes received, the number of voters who were given credit for voting and the number of ballots that were counted.”
I’m sorry, but that answer has nothing to do with chain of custody. Reconciling numbers against other numbers is a part of the audit process. And it’s only a small part of a full forensic audit, which Auditor Kimsey has refused to allow citizens to perform. The chain of custody has to do with the physical handling of the ballot from start to finish. And it’s really no wonder that Kimsey tries to conflate the two, considering that mail in ballots are by definition, a break in the chain of custody.
The chain of custody actually begins when ballots leave the Elections Department. The US Post Office is notoriously bad at delivering mail. Mail gets lost, gets delivered to the wrong address, gets delivered on the wrong day. And then the voter mails the ballot back. Numerous reports confirm that The USPS had problems delivering ballots back to the Elections Office, which is now why many election departments pick them up from the Post Office directly.The USPS certainly makes no guarantees as to the chain of custody while ballots are in their possession.
Let’s review.
According to the Center for Internet Security, Chain of custody refers to the process or paper trail documenting the control or transfer of equipment and materials, such as voting machines or ballots. While commonly thought of for physical pieces of equipment, chain of custody also applies to digital materials such as electronic transmissions or records. This includes the transfer of digital information to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of information are not compromised. It is critical to always know where this equipment is and who is handling it at any given time – a loss of physical or digital control can create unmanageable risks, result in election offices being unable to provide assurance a machine or system has not been tampered with, and undermine established public processes.
So how then, does Auditor Kimsey test a mail-in ballot? He clearly has no way of determining:
1.) That the person who received the ballot was actually the registered voter;
2.) That the person to whom the ballot was addressed actually voted, and not someone else;
3.) That the vote was confidential, and not coerced in any way;
4.) That no ballot harvesting or other similar schemes were conducted;
5.) That the ballot was not tampered with upon leaving the possession of the voter.
Lacking this chain of custody, there is absolutely no way to tell if the 142,000 votes cast by mail in Clark County’s last election are even legitimate. The limited-security features lauded by mail-in-vote proponents, including date and signature verification, are merely window dressing when you can’t track the source of the ballot.They are only provided as a consolation to the gaping break in the real chain of custody- the two-way travel of the ballot between voter and election office.
It’s simply another prime example of what I call “Security Theater”. When I’m elected, we’ll always make sure that registered voters are exactly who they say they are, live exactly where they say they live, and vote legally in every single election. Is that really too much to ask from your County Auditor.
I think not.
What happened to the chain of custody when Auditor Kimsey shipped the Clark County Election System’s Hart InterCivic Hard Drives to a vendor HQ in Austin, TX to be upgraded from WINDOWS 7 to WINDOWS 10 and from Verity Software Version 2.3 to 2.5? These are simple software upgrades that should pose no problem for our Clark County Auditor IT team to manage internally. Why then, did Kimsey bypass them and send our voting hard drives out of state?
Even worse, Kimsey neglected to image and retain the hard drive data (of the Operating System Software and Application Software) prior to sending the drives out of the building, out of the county, and out of the state- to the same vendor we discussed in Episode 2. Hart Intercivic. Owned by devon talbot.
Did Kimsey “hope” they’d be returned in perfect condition with no hidden or executable files inserted by the vendor? Oh that’s right. That’s why they call it “the Trusted Build”. We should just trust that it all was built correctly.
So when you hear Kimsey say,
"In addition, the chain of custody is tested by reconciling the number of ballot envelopes received, the number of voters who were given credit for voting and the number of ballots that were counted.”
.
Now you know how simply untrue that statement really is.
Join me and our fight to restore election integrity to all citizens of Clark County. Together, let’s make sure every legal vote gets counted.
