King County Elections says Republicans’ ballot drop box surveillance scheme is illegal

A scheme con­ceived by right wing activist Amber Krabach and her cronies on the now-dis­band­ed King Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty “Elec­tion Integri­ty Com­mit­tee” to sur­veil drop box­es through­out the coun­ty is an ille­gal effort to intim­i­date vot­ers, King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise declared late yesterday.

“King Coun­ty Elec­tions will not stand for intim­i­da­tion or scare tac­tics. I believe this is a tar­get­ed, inten­tion­al strat­e­gy to intim­i­date and dis­suade vot­ers from using secure bal­lot drop box­es. My team is not going to stand by and allow any group to seed fear and doubt amongst our res­i­dents and vot­ers, espe­cial­ly when they are sim­ply try­ing to make their voic­es heard,” said Wise in a state­ment.

“My team is doc­u­ment­ing and remov­ing these signs and refer­ring any infor­ma­tion about who placed them to the King Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion,” Wise added, con­firm­ing that the signs — which many democ­ra­cy defend­ers have sug­gest­ed be removed as quick­ly — are already com­ing down.

“Vot­er intim­i­da­tion is out­lawed at both the state and fed­er­al lev­el,” King Coun­ty Elec­tions’ press release not­ed. “No vot­er should be dis­cour­aged from exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote. Under state law, it is a crime to intim­i­date vot­ers in an effort to dis­cour­age them from deposit­ing their bal­lots in a drop box.”

“Under fed­er­al law, it is a crime when­ev­er two or more peo­ple con­spire to pre­vent or dis­cour­age peo­ple from exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote. These are seri­ous offens­es that impact the heart of our democracy.”

“King Coun­ty Elec­tions con­ducts some of the safest and most secure elec­tions any­where in our nation, and these intim­i­da­tion tac­tics are a direct exten­sion of the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic rhetoric [behind the attacks on our democ­ra­cy],” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine. “Vot­er intim­i­da­tion is a state and fed­er­al crime, and I’ve direct­ed Sher­iff Cole-Tin­dall to investigate.”

“There is no duty more sacred than pro­tect­ing the right to vote and our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, but today our democ­ra­cy is under threat from those for whom their own extreme ide­ol­o­gy is more impor­tant than the nation itself.”

“Signs intend­ed to make vot­ers feel like they are being watched and mon­i­tored and vio­lat­ing the law by deposit­ing bal­lots is vot­er intim­i­da­tion, peri­od,” con­curred King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Satterberg.

The ille­gal yard signs put up by Krabach and her gang declare “This Bal­lot Drop­box Is Under Sur­veil­lance” and then say “Accept­ing com­pen­sa­tion for har­vest­ing or deposit­ing bal­lots” (which is a most­ly unheard-of prac­tice) may be a vio­la­tion of Fed­er­al law.” Peo­ple read­ing the signs are then encour­aged to “report sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty here” via a pro­vid­ed QR code that goes to a page set up by Krabach and her elec­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist gang.

The scheme gained wide­spread atten­tion when Seat­tle Times polit­i­cal reporter Jim Brun­ner wrote a sto­ry about it ear­li­er this week. Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of that sto­ry, the Chair­man of the King Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty sent a cease-and-desist let­ter to Krabach telling her that her activ­i­ties were unau­tho­rized and unap­proved. The let­ter fur­ther instruct­ed Krabach to remove all the signs and warns that if she does­n’t, she could face legal action.

Krabach did not respond to the Times’ request for com­ment. Though it seems she is not com­ment­ing pub­licly about her scheme, NPI has learned that Krabach has been mak­ing the rounds at local Repub­li­can Par­ty meet­ings to pro­mote her can­di­da­cy for the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and her elec­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and has engaged with peo­ple dur­ing those appearances.

Oth­er elec­tion offi­cials, includ­ing Thurston Coun­ty Audi­tor Mary Hall, have also char­ac­ter­ized the signs as a total­ly unac­cept­able attempt to intim­i­date voters.

We agree. This is an out­ra­geous attempt at a sen­si­tive time to under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in faith in one of the coun­try’s most robust elec­tions systems.

Elec­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists such as Krabach are con­vinced that there is mas­sive fraud in Wash­ing­ton State and Amer­i­can elec­tions. Although they have absolute­ly no evi­dence to sup­port their ridicu­lous claims, they believe the process is rigged because it does not yield the out­comes that they want.

Elec­tions in King Coun­ty and Wash­ing­ton’s oth­er thir­ty-eight coun­ties are well secured. Vot­ers can be con­fi­dent that strong safe­guards are in place to pro­tect our democ­ra­cy and ensure that our sys­tem of elec­tions is pro­tect­ed against both domes­tic and for­eign threats, despite what peo­ple like Krabach say.