09/15/2022 Clark County, WA
Several weeks ago, 24 year incumbent auditor Greg Kimsey answered a question posted on Facebook that almost sounded logical. If you didn’t know better, you might actually believe that it was true. It’s so smoothly written, and so carefully crafted to deflect, answer questions never asked, and gaslight its reader- you might actually fall for it. I actually had to read it twice before I realized that every sentence in it was dishonest.
It’s hard to believe. I know. Which is why I’ve been dissecting Greg Kimsey’s Big Lie, sentence by sentence. Word by word. So you can see exactly how those who are actually responsible for the real lies, get away with blaming it all on you.
Let’s begin.
Sentence number 7.
Kimsey says,
“The term “forensic audit” has only recently been used to describe election reviews or audits and is not well defined.”
I wonder if they said that when the first forensic autopsies were conducted? Or the first forensic crime scenes were processed. Can you imagine denying a jury DNA evidence that proved a suspect's guilt because you hadn’t yet defined the word forensic examination? Forensic is well defined. Audit is well defined.
The Electoral Integrity Project defines electoral forensics in detail. The aim is to detect local outliers to the usual patterns of election results, such as in voter registration, voting turnout, vote shares cast for the incumbent, blank or invalid ballots cast, or other anomalies in the official results.
Where outliers cannot be explained satisfactorily by other factors, these appear to indicate cases of irregularities arising from practices such as electoral fraud, ballot-stuffing, malpractice, bribery, or vote tampering.
These techniques are most effective for capturing any problems occurring on or just after polling day. This is a valuable way to detect the most obvious types of voting anomalies which suggest illegal practices, irregularities and fraudulent manipulation of the outcome, particularly when statistical analysis is supplemented by other types of evidence, including the reports of observer missions, election watch NGOs, or journalists.
The techniques are unable to detect various types of malpractice occurring earlier during the electoral cycle and prior to polling day, however, such as those arising from media bias in campaign coverage, electoral laws, partisan redistricting, or restrictions on party registration or ballot access for candidates.
Thousands of forensic audits take place each year to root out corporate malfeasance and criminal activity inside corporations around the world. Why are we so reticent to apply these long standing techniques to our elections process?
The truth is, Greg Kimsey can conduct any audit he wants. He claims he has “unilateral authority to conduct elections in Clark County. He can conduct a forensic audit tomorrow. There is nothing that precludes him in law from doing so, even though he claims he can’t. Which takes us to Sentence number 8
Greg claims:
“ Many of the elements of what some people describe as part of a forensic audit are not allowed by Washington State Law.”
Really? Which elements are those that are precluded by State Law? Like:
Hand counting every ballot?
Vote in person offered county wide?
Verification of citizenship and county residency prior to issuing a ballot?
A complete clean up of the voter rolls?
The elimination of electronic counting?
24 hour video surveillance of all election processes?
Of course, Kimsey loves to cut and paste the references to Washington Law provided to him by the secretary of state and the county deputy prosecutor, which somehow answer hundreds of different election records requests with the exact same response, NO. It’s against the law. Often, the law Kimsey quotes has absolutely nothing to do with the specific request for documentation that has recently affected so many Clark County Citizens.
The truth is, CVRs or Cast Vote Records, are simply not personally identifiable and cannot reveal the person’s identity who cast the vote. Period. Kimsey’s repeated refusals to provide these documents under FOIA request is yet another link in a long chain of obfuscation and flat out corruption displayed for years by our county auditor.
Check out Episode 1 in this Series entitled “When an Audit Isn’t Really an Audit” and see how Kimsey continues to hide behind internal Risk Limiting Audits, instead of submitting to the electorate’s desire to conduct a full, third-party forensic audit.
So when you hear Kimsey say,
“The term “forensic audit”. Has only recently been used to describe election reviews or audits and is not well defined.”
and
“Many of the elements of what some people describe as part of a forensic audit are not allowed by Washington State Law.”
.
Now you know how completely misleading those statements really are.
