Good news on the election integrity front

Steve Duenkel must be a happy man today.

Duenkel has been running hard for the job of Mason County auditor since filing his candidacy last winter. He's been doing his homework and traveling the expanses of this county, knocking on doors and showing up at community events, where he's raised dark suspicions about the legitimacy of our elections, and about incumbent Mason County Auditor Paddy McGuire ("Why is he in that office? A lot of people are wondering, 'Why is he here?' ")

In fact, Duenkel was so, so very concerned about the condition of this county's election processes that he spearheaded an effort to expose the peculiarities that he suspected were rooting inside Mason County voter rolls in the 2020 and 2021 elections, including rumors of a dead person voting, people voting who registered their residence at an empty lot, "ghost voters" ... that sort of thing.

At a candidate event Tuesday in Shelton sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Mason County, Duenkel provided, while his election opponent McGuire sat next to him in front of a crowd of about 75 people, some insight into why he expended so much time and effort to pursue his suspicions of election fraud.

"I think most of you probably know," he told the crowd, "that I led a volunteer, nonpartisan effort last year called the Mason County Research Project where we were looking at voter anomalies from the 2021 and 2020 elections and the short answer of that story is, and it was confirmed by KING 5 News, that there are voter anomalies in our voting rolls. Our voter rolls are not current, they're not correct."

What a weight that must have been, discovering such fraud.

Speaking of KING 5 News, the Seattle station posted a story Tuesday that should soothe some of Duenkel's fears that Mason

County's most recent elections were fraudulent, at least when it comes to his worries about the county's voter list. Although, he's still got a lot of other worries about our elections. Let's hope he can help dismiss those worries too.

A reporter with the Seattle TV station walked up to the addresses highlighted in a report written by the Mason County Research Project and found the "voter anomalies" weren't all that anomalous. The reporter checked an "anomalous" empty lot and talked to the people living in those "anomalous" homes. On camera. In person. You can see it here: http://www.tinyurl.com/kayc9wh4.

"KING 5 visited more than a dozen addresses of supposed 'voter anomalies' and mailed and messaged additional voters," according to the station's story. "Most of the voter registrations KING 5 checked were not anomalies and could be explained or verified as legitimate voters."

We can all breathe easier now, along with Duenkel, that our 2020 and 2021 elections weren't hobbled by bizarre emanations like ghost voters and dead voters, although I imagine it must be a little embarrassing for Duenkel that a project he was responsible for turned in such shoddy work. We all make mistakes, right?

Toward the end of Tuesday's League of Women Voters public forum, the two auditor candidates were both asked the following question, which allowed Duenkel again to demonstrate how terribly concerned he is about election chicanery, regardless of whether it exists:

"If you're elected auditor in Mason County, how can the residents of the county be confident that you're the legitimate winner of the election?"

McGuire answered first: "I'm a Democrat. As auditor in 2020, there were 11 races contested, between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans won 10 of 11 races. I certified those results because they were accurate and fair and reflected the will of the voters."

Here's Duenkel's answer to the same question: "I'm not so sure they can be 100% confident. When we have voter rolls that need to be corrected and made current. I'm not sure we can have confidence when we are running elections on machines that don't meet EAC certification requirements. I'm not so sure we can count on the outcomes of elections when we know that our machines are accessible from outsiders through the internet. So, while I want to embrace the outcome of the election and trust that everybody did the right thing the right way, I don't know that any of us can have 100% certainty."

Let's give Duenkel credit. In his own small way, his hard work is helping expose the integrity of our election system.

Author Bio

Kirk Ericson, Columnist / Proofreader

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
email: [email protected]