‘There will be lawsuits’: Culp campaign ramps up claims of voter fraud, refusal to concede
Nov 17, 2020, 7:52 AM | Updated: 10:19 am
Former gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp’s campaign manager, Christopher Gergen, doubled down on claims of voter fraud Monday, vowing to file lawsuits over the results of the election.
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As of early Tuesday morning, just over 547,000 votes separated incumbent Governor Jay Inslee and Culp, with roughly 11,300 ballots left to tally. Despite that, Gergen reiterated what’s become a familiar talking point for the Culp campaign, saying that the former Republic sheriff “is not under any circumstances going to concede this race.”
“Win or lose, it doesn’t make a difference how this whole thing turns out, Mr. Culp is not going to concede,” Gergen declared.
Gergen claimed that there is “rampant fraud” in Washington state’s election systems, that Culp’s campaign has “a lot of evidence” to that effect, and that “there will be lawsuits” in the days ahead.
“We are going to come after the people who have facilitated this — they are cheating us,” he said, noting that he has “had conversations with President Trump’s attorneys” as well.
Trump’s own campaign has filed a series of lawsuits across several key battleground states contesting the results of the presidential election, a large majority of which have either been struck down or withdrawn.
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In Washington, Culp’s campaign alleges that it has “a lot of evidence of people receiving ballots who are not citizens,” as well as “evidence that dead people voted.” Gergen stopped short of producing that evidence Monday, though, saying that his office is still “looking into things.”
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman has repeatedly refuted claims of voter fraud at the state level, touting it as one of the safest systems in the nation.
To tabulate results, totals from each of the state’s 39 counties are counted from paper ballots, and then transferred to an air-gapped machine (i.e., a computer not connected to the internet). Those results are then transferred to a flash drive, which is plugged into an internet-enabled computer to transmit the final tallies.
For 2020’s election, several counties enacted additional stringent security measures as well, including new firewalls, and physical security systems on windows and doors.
