Put Up or Shut Up: Republicans on Voter Fraud

Democracy is based on willingness to accept defeat. If political combatants refuse to concede when they lose but instead resort to violence, or claim the election was stolen when they have no proof, democracy itself is at risk. Republicans, at the behest of a little man with a fragile ego who can’t accept that he lost an election, having been baselessly screaming fraud since 2020. They are getting ready to do it again this year. It has to stop.

Republicans went to court over 60 times after the 2020 election alleging fraud. They lost every time. Numerous nonpartisan investigations have found zero evidence of fraud. But still the Big Lie continues. Even Washington state Republicans absurdly claim elections they lose by hundreds of thousands of votes are somehow rigged.

American elections are not perfect; nothing built by human hands is. Every election there are going to be a very, very small number of mistakes made. But there is zero evidence – ZERO – indicating that any election results have been changed due to voter fraud. If you actual understand how elections are conducted, you will see how implausible voter fraud is today.

I have seen elections up close and personal. I have observed ballot counting and signature verification numerous times as a campaign staffer and a party chairman. As a King County Councilmember I served more than once on the Canvassing Board, the ad hoc body that oversees the election in each county and certifies the results. And in 2004, as Chairman of the Washington state Republican Party, I was intimately involved in one of the closest elections in American history. More on that later.

Let’s walk through the process. First, to register to vote you must provide proof of age, identity and residency. In most cases that means presenting a driver’s license or Social Security number. States regularly audit and update their voter rolls.

Before every election, counties, the level of government that actually conducts American elections, performs a Logic and Accuracy test, in the presence of observers from both parties, to ensure the tabulation equipment is working properly.

Only those registered to vote are allowed to vote at the polls or receive a ballot in the mail. Mail in ballots are scanned, and the signature on the envelope verified, before the ballot is counted. Provisional ballots, challenged ballots, and damaged ballots or ballots not properly filled out are reviewed by the county canvassing board.

All of this is required by law. Both political parties are allowed to observe every step of the process. Again, the system isn’t perfect, but large-scale fraud on a scale that could change tens of thousands of votes is virtually impossible.

But what about elections that are decided by very narrow margins? I have some experience there.

In 2004, when I was state party chairman, after all the votes were counted in the race for governor, Republican State Senator Dino Ross led Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire by 261 votes out of 2.8 million votes cast, one of the closest elections in American history. The mandatory machine recount resulted in Rossi winning by 42 votes! Democrats refused to concede and raised the money to pay for a hand recount.  Democrats learned that hundreds of absentee ballots had been rejected in the first two counts due to signature issues and went to court to add those ballots to the count. The State Supreme Court ruled for the Democrats, the ballots were counted, and on December 30 Gregoire was certified the winner by 129 votes.

In 2020 Donald Trump tried to gin up an election controversy. It was all a phony lie. The Rossi-Gregoire election was the real thing. The closest margin in the 2020 presidential election was in Arizona where Trump lost by just over 10,000 votes, roughly 100 times the margin in Rossi-Gregoire.

Our lawyers were certain we had a very strong case for an election challenge, so we went to court. We scrutinized that election for months and never found evidence of organized fraud. What we did find were enough errors and illegally cast ballots to prove that it was impossible to know who had actually won an election decided by .00005% of the vote. We asked the judge to order a new election. On June 6, 2005, the judge ruled that mistakes had been made and that illegal votes had been cast, but state law did not permit him to order a new election. Dino Rossi conceded that day.

We went to court with a legitimate case. We lost. And we conceded the election. That is how our system must work. Contrast that with the MAGA insurrection of 2020 and the ongoing Big Lie.

If my fellow Republicans truly believe there is enough fraud out there to defeat all the safeguards in our election system and alter large numbers of votes, I would say this: prove it. Put up or shut up. It is time to put country before party and stop undermining the foundation of our democracy.