King County responds to video showing fraudulent ballot printing

A viral post

In the video, an unnamed user shows a recording while navigating the King County Elections website. It allows registered voters to mark and print a replacement ballot online using OmniBallot software. To do this, you must provide a name and residential address.

“I entered incorrect information,” the woman said in the video. “I just thought of a name and a birthday and entered them into the ‘voter search’. So, of course, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I learned that this voter’s information couldn’t be found, but when it did, I had the option of either searching again or looking up the ballot by address. So I tried.”

She then enters what she calls a “suspicious” address that was allegedly used by homeless people to vote in elections. Once she was finished with the process, she was able to fill out and print a ballot to send in the mail.

“The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH independently verified the process recorded by the user.

But is this evidence of fraud? The video and subsequent reactions forced King County Elections to respond.

Is it really that easy to submit fake ballots in King County?

Using the video as evidence, social media users are now claiming or implying that the video shows vulnerabilities in the system or is evidence of fraud. Some draw attention to the video in good faith: what they see Is alarming. Others act in bad faith and routinely spread demonstrably false information to sow distrust in the electoral system.

But the video misses a crucial point: submitting a ballot does not mean it will be counted.

“The Jason Rantz Show” created a ballot under the name Fraud Voter. Had the ballot been submitted to King County Elections, it would have been immediately rejected because the name would not be included in the system as a registered voter.

“When someone prints a ballot through our online ballot marking program, the first thing our team does when it arrives at our headquarters in Renton is verify (1) that the ballot belongs to a registered voter and (2) that the voter did not “I already have.” a ballot was returned,” a spokesperson for King County Elections told “The Jason Rantz Show.” “If it doesn’t meet these requirements, it will be rejected. If these requirements are met, our staff will verify that the response signature matches the signature we have on the voter’s registration record. Ballot envelopes will not be opened until we confirm the signature matches.”

The spokesperson said two unregistered voters and one deregistered voter returned their ballots in the August 2024 primary. In the 2023 general election, there were six unregistered voters in King County and one disenrolled voter who returned their ballot. In the 2022 general election, 22 unregistered voters returned their ballots. In all cases the ballot papers were rejected.

But wait…there Is a vulnerability in printing ballots in King County

No, you cannot create a fake voter, print a ballot in their name, and have it counted. However, the video has a security hole.

For example, if someone knows their mother didn’t vote and has access to the mother’s signature, that person can easily mark, print and submit a ballot. It would then be counted. Unless the signature is rejected, the person’s mother would never know this happened. She would have to choose to check online that the ballot that was sent to her was submitted, which she wouldn’t do because why would she check something that she knows they didn’t submit?

Although the chances of this happening seem small, it is the case may happen, and there’s hardly anything you can do about it with postal ballots. That kind of vulnerability is one reason some Washingtonians want a return to in-person voting. And election officials don’t have a satisfactory answer to that concern. They argued it was against the law, as if this would deter some people from attempting fraud. In King County, laws are rarely followed or enforced.

Part of the reason this concern continues to arise is due to rumors that homeless people are being forced to vote or that unnamed activists are voting on behalf of a homeless person without their consent.

The state makes it easy for homeless people without a permanent address to vote. In Washington, for example, a voter can register to vote at a landmark or park. But for the scam to work, the activist would have to know the homeless man’s signature. That’s unlikely. And if fraud were going on on this scale, it would be hard to imagine it being kept so secret.

As for coercion or bribery, there is no system capable of preventing it. In theory, in-person voting could mitigate this danger, but it would not be foolproof.

Good faith concerns

Election integrity issues are real and we have a duty to discuss them.

Most people do this with good intentions. You see a potential problem and want it solved. Poll workers should acknowledge and address the concerns. Snohomish County Auditor Garth Fell hosted a series of question-and-answer sessions to answer questions anyone might have. He’s doing it the right way. Was all Things work better when people have trust in our system.

However, there is a minority of conspiracy theorists who spread with malicious intent actually Misinformation. While they should not be amplified, progressive activists, media speakers and some politicians claim that this small group is somehow representative of conservative voters. They are not.

But it’s to Democrats’ advantage to pretend otherwise as they work to leave our system vulnerable to fraud by standing in the way of voter ID laws or efforts to purge illegal immigrants and the dead from the voter rolls. There was even an attempt in Washington to stop the use of signature verification on ballots, saying the system was racist.

If all of these efforts are successful, they will make elections less secure.

OmniBallot lawsuit

According to the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP), there are legitimate concerns about using OmniBallot. She is suing King County Elections for using the software to “cure” ballots.

WSRP Chairman Jim Walsh understands that it is “unlikely” that someone would create a ballot for the wrong person. But he says he has concerns about the “more likely risk … that a bad actor could ‘vote’ as a registered voter who is dead or has moved away.”

“King County Elections and some other county election authorities use the OmniBallot phone app to ‘fix’ ballots where the voter’s signature does not match the signature of record. “This use is a clear violation of state election law, which states that ballots must be cured “directly” between the voter and the county,” Walsh told “The Jason Rantz Show.”

Walsh argued that using a third-party phone app to recover ballots would increase the likelihood that ballots cast fraudulently by dead or former residents would be counted.

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