Culp for Governor campaign lawsuit dismissed

Culp for Governor withdrew case
against Secretary of State

OLYMPIA — Late Thursday, January 14, 2021, the Culp for Governor campaign withdrew its case against Secretary of State Kim Wyman and several county auditors demanding an audit of Washington’s 2020 General Election. 

The notice of dismissal was filed “with prejudice,” meaning the lawsuit cannot be refiled.

“These unsubstantiated allegations were without merit and created confusion among Washington voters,” said Wyman. 

“Today we finally have an opportunity to shed light on some of the misleading and inaccurate assumptions made in this lawsuit, and can continue working to restore confidence with a swath of Washington’s electorate.”

Among its claims, the lawsuit alleged the Secretary of State and elections officials had failed to properly maintain voter registration lists. 

In review of the evidence submitted, the Office of the Secretary of State found the information was based on incomplete data and rife with errors, including lists of deceased voters who are in fact alive, voters who have moved but are in fact still eligible to vote in Washington, and so on. 

Specifically, the lawsuit identified by comparing the voter registration database and the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) National Change of Address (NCOA) list nearly 339,000 registered voters who had moved but their addresses were not up to date. 

However, election officials do not rely solely on NCOA data when verifying addresses, and steps to mitigate the risk of erroneous removal from the rolls are taken prior to updating a voter’s registration record. 

A vast majority of any perceived discrepancies in the data can be attributed to trivial factors, such as using “N” instead of “North” in a street address or the NCOA data listing a post office box instead of a residential address. Also, Washington voters who have their mail forwarded out of state may still be considered a resident for voting purposes.

The suit also alleged the Secretary of State had not run an NCOA update in at least four years, claiming “out of 5,236,436 addresses, only 117,543 had nine-digit zip codes.” 

Zip codes beyond the first five digits are not routinely stored because the additional digits change frequently. Prior to ballots being mailed in every election, mail houses reformat addresses to ensure consistency with USPS standards, including providing the additional four digits.

Election officials use several means to identify deceased voters, and an analysis of the more than 7,000 deceased voters the Culp for Governor campaign noted found these cases to be false. 

Samples analyzed by some counties found these claims to be baseless, as ballots returned by deceased people are valid so long as the voter was alive at the time they cast their ballot.

“As I have said before, I welcome anyone who has questions about Washington’s elections processes or who has substantive evidence of fraud to reach out to my office. I publicly invited Loren Culp to do the same, and he never contacted me or my office to share his concerns,” Wyman said.