Editor,
Over 8,000 Clark County voters want more accountability in their elections, yet Auditor Greg Kimsey ignores the facts.
There are numerous suspicious cases reported to Kimsey and the sheriff after each election. They range from family members signing the ballots of other family members, to people signing ballots of deceased voters, to non-citizens voting in elections.
Our Motor Voter Registration System has no requirement to prove citizenship. Any license applicant can check the voter registration box on the driver’s license form. All a non-citizen voter has to do to avoid prosecution is to say they checked the box by mistake. That makes the act illegal but unintentional, and there is no fraud.
I have done investigations based on numerous public data requests. The truth is that the auditor turns suspected fraud over to the sheriff’s department and washes his hands of the case. The sheriff investigates “as time permits.” Some investigation timelines approach the statute of limitations. Prosecuting Attorney Tony Golik similarly puts a low priority on these cases.
In one case, Golik declined to prosecute a non-citizen who illegally voted 28 times. Another case, where a person voted on her deceased mother’s ballot, was the first case brought to court since 1999. This person was given a plea deal where she was sentenced to 30 days community service versus up to five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.
Federal and state laws have made the information necessary to prosecute off limits to citizens. Immigration and naturalization records are not available for inspection. Anonymous cast voter records, which would highlight anomalies, are put off limits by the state at the request of auditors. They don’t really want transparency!
Kimsey should be required to report every case of suspected fraud to the County Council and follow that case through the system, reporting the status of each historical case through to its natural conclusion. But he won’t do that because that would be an admission that there is voter fraud in Clark County. Kimsey vehemently opposed the Restore Election Confidence petition to avoid such embarrassment.
There is currently an ethics investigation into Kimsey because he appears to have put his thumb on the scale rather than being impartial. We will see if the new county ethics committee can do a legitimate job enforcing ethics required of an elected official or not.
There are problems in our election system. People have voted illegally.
Rick Vermeers
Camas
