Lawsuit alleging November 2020 election fraud filed in Whatcom County

Three Whatcom County residents and nonprofit Washington Election Integrity Coalition United (WEiCU) recently filed a lawsuit alleging Whatcom County auditor Diana Bradrick and Whatcom County government committed election fraud during the November 2020 election.

The lawsuit is the fourth filed by WEiCU, pronounced “we see you,” filed in September. The others were filed in Snohomish, Thurston and Clark counties between September 16 and September 21. The plaintiffs are not seeking to decertify the election, according to court documents.

In the lawsuit filed September 10 in Whatcom County Superior Court, plaintiffs Evelyn Hopf of Blaine, Darcy Lynn Hocker of Maple Falls, Joseph Grant of Bellingham and Gig Harbor-based WEiCU allege video footage shows an election worker tampering with ballots under Bradrick’s supervision.

According to the plaintiffs, a livestream video appears to show a Whatcom County election worker marking ballots by moving her pen across in a line and then making a circle on each ballot, which plaintiffs argue was near the governor’s race between Loren Culp and Jay Inslee. Based on “information and belief,” the plaintiffs believe “an abnormally high percentage” of ballots were write-in votes for Republican candidate Joshua Freed.

“Plaintiffs have demanded a jury trial and seek a judgement that defendant Bradrick not only acted in error and/or neglect of duty, but also engaged in what appears to be a cover-up through misleading statements and failure to produce ballots for comparison to the video evidence,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiffs allege the county auditor used an uncertified voting system and didn’t provide adequate ballot security measures. They also accuse Bradrick of covering up ballot tampering when the county auditor’s office published a response to a video of the alleged tampering that circulated on Rumble.com.

In the auditor’s office response, available at bit.ly/3m7UETg, the office explained that the election worker was preparing ballots prior to being duplicated, which is done when ballots won’t scan. The procedure requires workers to write a control number at the bottom of the original ballot and at the top of the new duplicated ballot to verify each ballot is properly reproduced. A worker would then write a control number on a duplication log before two other workers duplicate each unscannable ballot.

The lawsuit also alleges Bradrick denied WEiCU’s public records request to produce the ballots, which was also denied in other counties WEiCU filed lawsuits against. Plaintiffs also allege the auditor’s office of using open sleeves and an uncertified voting system.

WEiCU is attempting to get a court order to have Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the inventor of a fraudulent ballot detecting device, conduct a forensic audit of the ballots in question. The Washington lawsuits come as Arizona Republicans completed their audit of the November 2020 election on September 24, which confirmed Maricopa County numbers aligned with the results from 2020.

The Washington secretary of state’s office did not provide a comment to The Northern Light. Secretary of state Kim Wyman, the only Republican to hold office statewide, told The Everett Herald in a September 20 article on the lawsuits, “This is the new reality on the ground for election administrators. It doesn’t matter how wide a margin in the results. You call everything into question and it undermines the validity of everything in the process.”

Bradrick declined to comment during the ongoing litigation.