WA Secretary of State takes on election misinformation in Tri-Cities discussion
In his first trip to Eastern Washington since taking office, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is reaching out to communities to reaffirm the integrity of the state’s elections systems in the lead up to this year’s midterm elections.
On Wednesday, June 22, Hobbs stopped by Columbia Basin College for a discussion with local county auditors on ballot security. It was his second in a string of local stops he made, sandwiched between visits in Walla Walla and Vancouver, Washington.
With Washington state residents set to receive their primary election ballots in about a month, Hobbs says it’s important now to highlight the investments his office is making to ensure Washington elections remain fair, thorough and transparent.
“The problem is that we have not really been informing the public of the reality of elections here in Washington state, and (about) the transparency, the security of our elections and the ability to cast your vote knowing that it’s going to be counted,” he told the Tri-City Herald.
The Secretary of State’s office is doubling its cybersecurity budget this next fiscal year, as well as strengthening its ties with the Air National Guard’s cyber unit, FBI and Homeland Security. His office is also working to combat misinformation through larger outreach campaigns and to strengthen ties with local auditor’s offices.
Hobbs said there’s an incessant effort by “malign actors,” both foreign and domestic, to discredit and attack the state’s elections system.
Recently, the U.S. Cyber Command flagged six Russian IP addresses that “perhaps state and local governments were sending to,” he said. Though his office was notified, the feds wouldn’t say what information, if any, was collected. There’s also recently been a “grassroots effort” to discredit the use of Albert sensors, a security monitoring device which alerts networks to things like malware.
After the 2020 election, Franklin County came under scrutiny for being the only county in Washington state to use Dominion Voting Systems tabulation software, despite it being approved for both federal and state use.
Dominion is among the largest supplier of voting technology in the country, but the company quickly came under question by former President Donald Trump. Some vocal detractors have also peddled unsubstantiated claims, such as that the system was switching votes against Trump and that the company is tied to the Democrats.
“We’ve heard the attacks on Dominion have been refuted to the point that Dominion is actually suing for libel. So, I think those things are put to rest,” he said.
Tampering with county tallies is also especially difficult in Washington state, where there’s a paper trail and all 39 county auditors conduct their tabulation offline.
“No one’s going to be able to penetrate any of these county tabulations because they would actually have to have an insider threat in order to do that,” he said.
Ballot fraud is also extremely rare. Hobbs pointed to King County during the 2020 election, where only 17 of the 1.2 million ballots cast were identified as fraudulent. All ballots were filed by voters later found to be dead, and no widespread voter fraud was suspected by elections staff.
Hobbs’ seat is also up for reelection this year. He was appointed last year as a Washington state senator after the departure of Republican Kim Wyman, who left to take a cybersecurity job in the Biden Administration.
He’s the first Democrat to fill the seat since 1964.
“I’ve always worked in a bipartisan manner. I’ve had support from both sides of the aisle, I’m known as a consensus builder,” Hobbs, 52, said.
Hobbs is also currently a lieutenant colonel in the Washington Army National Guard, and has more than 30 years of military experience.
Next month, Hobbs will visit Spokane and Yakima as part of his election information outreach.
