The findings of watchdog group Judicial Watch can be confirmed. They reported that Jefferson County was one of 353 counties across the nation with more registered than eligible voters. With their data in hand and having received a lengthy statement from Jefferson County Auditor Rose Ann Carroll, I can say that the Judicial Watch findings are substantially correct.
Judicial Watch’s voter information came from the Washington Secretary of State’s data. Judicial Watch obtained its number of eligible voters from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS). ACS surveys are sent to 3.5 million households each month, and, according to Judicial Watch “are considered to be the most reliable estimates outside the decennial census.” The U.S. Census Bureau describes the ACS as “the premiere source for detailed population and housing information about our nation.” The 2018 survey was the culmination of five years of data collection and is the most recently reported ACS survey.
Judicial Watch found that Jefferson County had a total of 29,221 registered voters compared to 26,308 eligible voters resulting in having 11.107% more registered votes on its rolls than people of voting age.
I calculated slightly different numbers. The 2018 ACS I was able to locate reported that Jefferson County had a population of 30,856, with 3,926 under the age of 18. That results in an eligible voting population of 26,930. However you cut it, Jefferson County, has more registered than eligible voters.
Auditor Carroll provided me with the county’s latest numbers which show a total of 30,107 registered voters, again more than the number of eligible voters.
But Jefferson County has grown since the end of 2018, one might say. Could that explain away the problem?
The answer is “no.” The Census Bureau does put out other estimates of population data that are not as reliable as the five-year collection of data in the ACS. Its 2019 Vintage Estimate pegs Jefferson County’s population at 32,221, an increase of 1,365 or an annual increase of 4.4%. One could quibble with that estimate: where did those 1,365 new people find housing in a county with a vacancy rate of 0% that is producing very, very few new housing units? We don’t have that many babies, and our sizable old population means a larger percentage of the population than average dies each year.
Even accepting data that the Census Bureau does not promote as superior to the ACS data, we still have more registered than eligible voters. The 2019 Vintage Estimate figures indicate 3,802 persons under age 18, resulting in an eligible voting population of 28,419, once again substantially below the registered voter total reported by Auditor Carroll.
So what’s going on?
First off, this does not indicate a huge voter fraud problem, but rather one that exposes Jefferson County to litigation to force it to clean up its voter rolls and close the door on the potential for voting misconduct.
Judicial Watch’s nationwide study showed “1.8 million excess, or ‘ghost’ voters in 353 counties across 29 states,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”
Judicial Watch has successfully sued a number of governmental entities for violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by carrying large numbers of inactive voters on their rolls–what Judicial Watch calls “ghost voters.’
In Jefferson County we have more registered than eligible voters because our rolls are carrying 2,266 inactive voters. According to the Secretary of State of Washington, “If an election-related piece of mail is returned by the post office as undeliverable to the voter at that address, the registration is placed on ‘inactive’ status. A voter who is on inactive status may return to active status at any time by updating his or her address, requesting a ballot, or submitting a new voter registration application.”
But our active voter roll also includes people who receive ballots though they should not be voting here. We have reported several instances of people in Texas and Arizona getting Jefferson County ballots, and a woman in Jefferson County receiving a ballot for her daughter who moved to Texas years ago. One reason is, as we reported here, that the Auditor has selected a mail forwarding option with the USPS that results in the ballot following someone to addresses outside the county instead of being returned when it cannot be delivered to their previous Jefferson County address. There is an option that would prevent this from happening, but it is not the one selected by the Auditor.
While it is illegal for these people to vote in a Jefferson County election, there is nothing to stop them and little chance they would be caught. There is no national registry that would automatically catch people voting in different states, and it does happen. Instead of an enforcement mechanism to prevent such voter fraud, we have an honor system. A Pew Study in 2012 found that 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and as many as 70,000 in three or more states. As Carroll explained in her email to us, it is up to the voter to take their name off our rolls when they move away. “A change of address via the United States Postal Service,” Carroll explained, “doesn’t mean that one’s voter registration is automatically cancelled and reassigned.”
In an attempt to catch people voting in different states, Washington and 29 other states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). “ERIC members regularly exchange information about registered voters with member states comparing election information to detect double voters,” says Carroll.
What is Carroll’s response to the findings of Judicial Watch that Jefferson County has more registered than eligible voters (which I have confirmed)? “VoteWA is Washington State’s registration system. The VoteWA system is secured by highly skilled Office of the Secretary of State IT staff and Security Operations Center, using state of the art equipment and following IT industry best practices. All 39 counties use VoteWA.”
That is true, but it doesn’t contradict the findings by Judicial Watch. Thirteen other Washington counties share our problem. This is the very sort of failure at cleaning up voting rolls that keeps Judicial Watch lawyers busy.
Auditor Carroll spent a good deal of time composing her statement. It provides a good primer on many aspects of Washington’s voting laws and practices. It is the policy of the Port Townsend Free Press to publish in full all written responses to our written inquires. Accordingly, here it is:
Basic Information About Ballot Counting and Signature Checking of Every Ballot
Washington’s system of voting is in Chapter 29A.40 RCW. RCW 29A.40.010 states: “Each active registered voter shall continue to receive a ballot by mail until the death or disqualification of the voter, cancellation of the voter’s registration, or placing the voter on inactive status.” The County sends ballots to voters with a return envelope. RCW 29A.40.091(1). The return envelope contains a statement that the voter must sign under penalty of perjury “that it is illegal to vote if he or she is not a United States citizen; it is illegal to vote if he or she has been convicted of a felony and has not had his or her voting rights restored; and it is illegal to cast a ballot or sign a ballot declaration on behalf of another voter.” RCW 29A.40.091(2). All received return envelopes must be placed in secure locations from the time of delivery to the county auditor until their subsequent opening. RCW 29A.40.110(1).
RCW 29A.40.110 requires that all signatures on return envelops must be verified against registration records. All personnel assigned to verify signatures must receive training on statewide standards for signature verification. Personnel must verify that the voter’s signature on the ballot declaration is the same as the signature of that voter in the registration files of the county. Election observers appointed by the major political parties are present during the processing of the ballots at the County counting center. RCW 29A.40.100.
Jefferson County follows the required process completely and faithfully.
Basic Information about the Security of the Tabulation Systems Used in Washington
Washington employs paper-based systems, including voter verifiable paper audit trails, independent testing, pre- and post-election audits, and physical security of tabulation equipment.
Before a tabulation system can be used in Washington, the state requires testing at a federally approved independent testing lab. These expert testers include security reviews as a part of their overall testing efforts.
Then, systems are tested at the state level and reviewed by Washington’s voting systems certification board, comprised of technology experts, accessibility experts, and certified county election officials.
Counties must then perform acceptance testing and logic and accuracy testing prior to every election. The Washington Secretary of State’s office conducts post-election audits, where they draw precincts and races at random and compare the vote totals from the tabulator to a hand count of ballots before the election is certified.
How can voter move out of Washington State & receive a ballot to vote in Jefferson County?
Voting twice in any election is a felony. Thirty states including Washington are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC members regularly exchange information about registered voters with member states comparing election information to detect double voters.
The United States doesn’t have a universal registration system. Rather, each state has their own voter registration system and data. When voters move from one state to another, they have an obligation to cancel their registration and re-enroll at their new address. We work hard to convey this at every opportunity. This is true wherever you live, regardless of polling place or Vote-By-Mail. If you are registered to vote in Arizona and then move to Oregon, your name will remain in the poll books in Arizona until you notify the registrar that you have moved to Oregon. And since Arizona allows absentee voting, you could certainly receive a mailed Arizona ballot while you are in Oregon.
If someone is an active voter in Washington State even if they have been temporarily assigned to a new work location, gone away to college or seasonally go to a warmer climate for the Winter they are still eligible to receive a ballot. We would hate to see them miss an election since they took the time to register to vote in Washington State.
If someone no longer wishes to be a Washington State voter. The voter must terminate their registration by notifying us by written notification which must include their signature. A change of address via the United States Postal Service doesn’t mean that one’s voter registration is automatically cancelled and reassigned.
Anyone who is registered to vote in one state and moves to another state has an obligation to do the responsible thing and update their voter registration with the state they moved from and the state they moved to.
Judicial Watch claim of having more registered voters than eligible voters in Jefferson County.
VoteWA is Washington State’s registration system. The VoteWA system is secured by highly skilled Office of the Secretary of State IT staff and Security Operations Center, using state of the art equipment and following IT industry best practices. All 39 counties use VoteWA. Jefferson County has the ability to run a report that will give us the following information as of the last update done at the State level.
County Jefferson
Active Voter is fully qualified to vote. (Receives a Ballot)
Inactive Notification received from USPS that election mail sent to the voter was undeliverable or the voter moved out of the county. (Does not receive a Ballot)
Pending Record is processing or an issue must be resolved. (Does not receive a Ballot)
Active + Inactive + Pending = Total Registered Voters
Fort Worden’s $2 million glamping project is a soggy mess. I walked the hillside where the glamping project was supposed to have 19 luxury tents completed by June. The clouds were spitting rain and the wind cut like a knife. I counted only 16 sites under construction. Only one luxo-tent is completed. That is the model home for the development, so to speak. The rest are in various states of being somewhat done to just started.
I saw no evidence of the “event center” that was going to anchor the development. From what I can tell from public documents, the fancifully labelled “event center” was to be just a large mess tent.
16 tents for $2 million.
The platforms were sited to utilize extant sewer and water lines from the days when the military housed personnel on this hillside. The lines were fixed and upgraded. Electricity was run to each tent platform The rest is canvas and rope, lumber, plywood, nails, screws and PVC.
Those are indeed luxury tents: $125,000 each. That kind of money could have rehabbed quite a few rooms in Fort Worden’s existing inventory of buildings. It could have bought super-attractive tiny homes from GreenPods on Sims Way that could be rented as cabins year-round. These tents on that blustery, chilly hillside would be unheated and available for rent only during our summer months.
The project is deteriorating without bringing in any income. The tents last only ten years. For those few bundles of canvas that have been spread over frames, they will have one winter less in their life-span before they see their first glamper sipping Chablis and snacking on Brie and crackers.
It is doubtful this project will ever see completion. Acting PDA Manager David Timmons has discovered that $600,000 of the $2 million loaned by Kitsap Bank specifically for the project was diverted to other uses without Board approval.
I wrote that Fort Worden has been hit by the Cherry Street Project Disease. Examine the photos below. Similar causes, I wrote. Similar symptoms, too.
Delayed From the Start
A review of the minutes of the Fort Worden PDA Board of Directors shows that the glamping project fell behind even in the conceptual stage, which began in 2015. Three years later it got a Power Point presentation in February 2018. It was originally supposed to have a “soft open” in March 2020. That was critical to its financial viability. Then it was to be June, and there was talk of August. Now it’s opening date is no longer even under consideration.
By way of comparison, during the 4-5 years the Fort Worden PDA has been talking about and stumbling forward building some tent platforms, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe started and finished its multi-story hotel at its Blyn casino.
Governor Inslee’s lock down order stopped construction temporarily in mid-March, although government projects that provided housing were permitted to move forward. The PDA, curiously, did not try to shoehorn its project into this exemption. (A swimming pool in Port Angeles used the fact that it had a room for day care to continue construction as a government housing project.) Then, when a couple months later the Governor allowed construction across the board to resume, the PDA didn’t have the money it had borrowed for the project. In violation of the terms of its bond from Kitsap Bank, the PDA had diverted those funds elsewhere.
So the project sits empty, stalled out in cold, winter rains with water pooling on plywood platforms. It’s sharing that exposed, weathered plywood look with the Cherry Street Project.
The PDA’s loan to Kitsap Bank is due the first quarter of 2021. The PDA doesn’t have the money to pay what it owes. Kitsap Bank reportedly financed the $2 million glamping loan internally, which means our local bank will also a take hit due to the PDA’s malfeasance. Like a bank that lends to broke nations, there does not seem to be any collateral that can pay off some of the bad debt loss. And its not just that the PDA has fallen short; it violated the terms of its loan by spending the funds on things besides the project for which the loan was extended.
A Pipedream
Why did the PDA ever think that its costly glamping project made financial sense?
In a March interview with The Leader David Robison, PDA’s Executive Director for the past 9 years (but now retiring), said that Fort Worden’s glamping facility would be just like the one where he had stayed in Friday Harbor up in the San Juan Islands. The glamping facility there is the Lakedale Resort at Three Lakes.
Robison said that the PDA’s glamping tents would be almost exactly the same as these. I was able to peek inside the model tent (The vent was open. I zipped and snapped it shut after my look-see.) The single finished model does appear roughly similar to the Lakedale resort tents, but not as elaborately decorated.
The major difference is the surroundings. The Fort Worden setting is not comparable to Lakedale’s lakeside isolation. The PDA’s glamping sites, for which they had hoped to charge from about $170 to over $220 a night, are squeezed behind old Army buildings along black top roadways.
None of the tents pictured are finished. Their platforms are incomplete. In some, utilities are not connected and all are unfinished inside–just bare plywood for flooring, wires hanging from rafters, etc. (You can see some of this through windows that have been left open. I did not step inside any tents.) You could say that the few with canvas are just hiding all the work that’s been left undone.
As for the $125,000 luxo-tents in the trees (“incredibly luxurious,” Robison claimed), this is what they look like now.
But the Guard Shack is done–Or what’s with the Peninsula Daily News?
The Leader ran with a large front-page story about the financial crisis at Fort Worden. The widely read Jefferson County Facebook page, the on-line news outlet of Patrick Sullivan, former Leader editor, and Joe D’Amico of Security Services Northwest, provided expanded coverage on the crisis. The Port Townsend Free Press has run two stories about the impending collapse of the PDA’s house of cards and its years of dodgy finances (here and here). Not a word from the Peninsula Daily News. This is kind of, like, you know, a pretty big deal. The Fort Worden PDA is a pillar of Port Townsend’s creative community, it houses Centrum’s festivals, and it is one of the county’s largest employers with 170 on its payroll.
Two weeks after the alarming news broke, the PDN finally had news on Fort Worden. This was a front-page story!
(Photo, Zach Jablonski, Peninsula Daily News)
The old guard shack has been restored.
[It was pointed out to us since publication of this article that the PDN did have a story on the financial malfeasance at Fort Worden. But the information about the improper shifting of funds, credit card abuses and defalcations was buried deep into the article, and it took the PDN a full two weeks to acknowledge the crisis. And, to be clear, the guard house restoration was a project of the Friends of Fort Worden, which has been untainted by the financial scandals of the PDA.]
In closing, for your listening pleasure and reflection, here’s Richard Harris’s iconic ballad about how it feels when reality sets in and can no longer be avoided.
I’m not conceding this election AT ALL. Unless you can show me evidence of President Dewey and President Gore, you will understand that the media does not choose our president for us. They called those elections, too. They both flipped.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to say is that No, we will not be holding hands and singing kumbaya. There will be no “healing and restoration.” I will not be playing hashtag “unity” and hashtag “community goodwill.”
I have just spent the last four years being demonized and disrespected by immature bullies who did not get what they wanted and used that as permission to call me uneducated, deplorable, brainwashed, hateful, a racist, a bigot, and other assorted names.
I’ve just spent 7 months practically locked down in my home over a complete lie. I’ve now barely got an income and I’ve watched far too many small businesses die. I’ve seen people lose their homes. I’ve watched people overdose on drugs and struggle with mental health and suicide issues and I’ve suffered tone deaf public officials and local leadership that just doesn’t care.
I’m not interested in forgiveness, instead I’m ready to see some people go to prison. What has been done to us is a human rights violation.
Don’t even get me started about “the church” at large. Some of the most vicious attacks have come from that direction, from the tolerance teams and the woke ones. I sure sucked some sour grapes today (November 7) reading those very same people trying to claim, NOW we need to pray for our leaders, we all just need to be more Christ-like!
No. Your authority is completely revoked. If I need to be more Christ-like, He’ll tell me.
I’ve grown up, I’ve learned a few things and I’ve gained some self respect. I will never again compromise my beliefs or my values just to help other people feel better. Relationships with people are no longer important to me and I won’t waste one moment investing in them. I’d rather be alone.
It’s a good place to be.
[Originally published November 7, 2020 at insanitybytes blog]
In a June 30, 2020 article in The American Thinker Charles Battig points out that Planet of the Humans, the recent film produced by Michael Moore, shows how the reality of needing to provide 24/7 reliable electricity to consumers requires that fossil fuels remain the world’s primary energy sources. This is because of the failure of wind or solar to provide power if there is no wind or insufficient sun. Renewables cannot displace reliable fossil-fuel power plants. And consumers’ energy bills do not go down, but go up, when renewables are imposed.
With his recent book, False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg continues to straddle the fence on global warming, aka “climate change.” As the original “skeptical environmentalist,” Bjorn has argued that there are more productive ways to aid humanity than spending billions trying to influence planetary climate change. He has argued for improving sanitation, clean water supplies, basic nutrition, and providing paths out of poverty for the millions living in underdeveloped countries. In this book, he continues to press for a concerted effort to alleviate these ills, rather than accepting the decades of panic-driven calls for “fixing the climate.”
Keeping much of the world in poverty while billions are thrown at a climate change crusade is even more unjustified because the scientific data does not support alarms of an existential climate emergency.
Climate Change CO2 Theory Failures
When all the dozens of temperature prediction models driven by CO2 levels are run with real data starting in 1979, they grossly over estimate the global temperatures.
This was presented to the Environment And Public Works Committee of the United States Senate in 2013 by Roy W. Spencer, PhD of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Buried 774 pages into the UN IPCC’s Third Assessment Report summary, is this disclaimer regarding the existence of scientific certainty. It stated: “In research and modeling of the climate, we should be aware that we are dealing with a chaotic, nonlinear coupled system, and that long-term predictions of future climate states is not possible.”
It should also be noted that it is these grossly exaggerating temperature prediction models are the same temperature models that drive the sea level increase models.
Looking at real world data we see that glacier melting and ocean lever rise started long before our heavy use of fossil fuels started.
Looking at the “Greenhouse Layer” in the upper atmosphere we see that the models fail miserably when compared with real data from UK Hadley Center atmospheric balloon data. Similar results are found in data from satellites.
Deceptive Use of Data
Claiming we are seeing more drought conditions by only looking at data after 1940 totally ignores the extreme drought conditions of the 1930’s. Here is all the data from NOAA.
Then there is the claim that global warming is causing more fires. The data runs counter to that claim, as shown by data collected by the National Interagency Fire Center. And using “acres burned” as a stand-in for fires is highly deceptive. Most forest management experts indicate that the increase in acreage burned is due to mismanagement.
Also, it should be pointed out that during the last 600 million years, there where times where global CO2 levels were as much as 10 to 20 times higher than now and times when global average temperatures were as much as 20F higher but nothing dastardly happened.
A joint NASA and MIT research effort reported in 2019 as having identified and quantified a feedback effect in tropical cloud formations that dumps excess heat into outer space.
NOAA Hurricane and Tornado data shows no increase in severe weather events and WHO data shows a phenomenal decrease in world-wide per capita deaths due to extreme events.
Topping all this off, the UN IPCC 2012 Risk Assessment Report found no metrics that indicate a problem associated with the slight warming we have experienced since the 1970s.
What is Going on Here?
As my daughter once asked: “Why are the politicians lying to us?” The answer was provided by the journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken decades ago when he wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Or expanding on what President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said, “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste, even if you have to invent one.
Democrats rule supreme and Jefferson County is paying the price for their almost two decades of monopoly power.
Just look at the city and county elected officials in every office. Only one is not a Democrat. All the various boards of the county and city are appointed by one party. No decision is made in Jefferson County that does not conform to the tenets of the Democratic Party.
What has been the effect of this domination? Answer: the problems we have now that we didn’t have when there was a viable two-party system in this county.
We lack good jobs more than ever. Our children have to leave to find employment. Don’t believe me? Ask your neighbors and friends with children who graduated from local high schools why their kids are gone.
Not only do we lack jobs, we also lack affordable housing more than ever before. There have been no apartment buildings built in a very long time. While we have over 300 subdivisions in Jefferson County none have been created in many years. Starter homes are in terribly short supply and their cost is skyrocketing.
The other side of the coin on housing affordability I’ve already mentioned: we don’t have jobs that make it possible for people to afford the housing that is here.
We do not have businesses moving to our area. When it is big news is that a commercial kitchen opened in Port Townsend so a couple food trucks have a place to prepare sandwiches you know there is a problem. Where is the news of a shoe store opening, or a clothing store or a manufacturing company that offers solid blue-collar wages?
There are many who say, “GOOD. We do not want all that. We’re here to get away from that world.” There is a certain amount of merit to that for a privileged few people who really do want to escape the world of young people with good jobs, roofs over their heads and who are building new families. These are the people with the money to buy their Nirvana. But, the result is that the value of property soars and the local people who need jobs and have families get squeezed to the point that they have to leave. So the entire county gets gentrified. This, in fact, has been a conscious policy goal of the elite Democrats in Port Townsend.
All of this has been written and talked about before. What has been ignored is the real reason it is happening. The answer is the people who run the Democratic Party.
Face it. We live in a dictatorship of a single party, kind of like those “Banana Republics” we hear about. One party, one rule. Do it our way or take the highway!
What we are lacking is an opposing view. Our nation was established to allow the view of even one person to be heard. It is quite important to have a forum for disparate views. But, it is just not hearing those voices that is important. We need the give and take that happens when one party does not control everything. Sometimes that give and take is messy. But, in the end it establishes a society that is much fairer and healthier.
One party rule does not work in the long run. The current one-party regime has lasted for over 15 years. When it collapses, which it will, there will be reverberations that could be avoided if the party in power had listened to the other side. One way for other voices to be heard is to simply appoint a wide range of politically and ideologically diverse people to the various boards that advise decision makers. Long term what would be much more fair and reasonable would be to establish a county charter so that county commission districts in the county elect their own representatives to reflect and serve their distinct interests. But, that might threaten the Democrats’ monopoly control and they will use their dominance to keep their grip on their monopoly power even though the county would benefit.
