Spin Control: Why the latest requests for an election audit and ban on COVID mandates might not go far

A week ago Friday, as the Legislature was churning toward adjournment just six days away, a group calling itself the Washington State Tea Room showed up in the Capitol with hand trucks bearing boxes of paperwork for the governor, the leaders of the House and Senate, and the attorney general.

The boxes held thousands of signed “lawful affidavits” from people around the state demanding two things: a forensic audit of the entire 2020 Washington general election and an end to the mask mandate and the emergency rules in place in the state for COVID-19.

It was the result of nearly a year of what Tea Room founder Brianna Mattes called an independent, “very hush-hush” movement that involved signing sessions around the state, including last January in Spokane Valley. Still, they managed to collect thousands of the signed documents, about evenly divided between a forensic audit of elections and an end to COVID mandates.

While the group’s name sounds like either a cozy spot where one might order a pot of Earl Grey and a scone, or a hangout for members of the old tea party, it’s really neither, Mattes said.

It comes from the saying of “spilling the tea,” that is, to get information or gossip out. (According to Merriam-Webster, the phrase arose in Black drag culture, and likely first popped up in print in the 1994 bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”)

The photocopied affidavits involve several pages of arguments quoting various passages from the U.S. Constitution, the Washington Constitution and several other state constitutions, with signature lines for interested people to sign and a notary to attest.

With a video camera rolling, they had hoped to deliver them in person as part of their constitutional right to “petition their government for the redress of grievances.” They were able to drop them off at the office of Lt. Gov. Denny Heck, who serves as president of the Senate.

A spokesman for Heck said he had no comment on the documents, and wouldn’t comment on why he had no comment.

They had less luck at Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, and outside the doors of the state House of Representatives. The governor’s office has been closed to the public for much of the past two years because of COVID. Inslee wasn’t there, and the group was eventually told the proper service for legal documents is the attorney general’s office.

Mattes later complained that Inslee’s office refused to accept service or sign for the documents. Mike Faulk, a spokesman for Inslee, said the attorney general’s office is the proper place to serve legal documents for a governor.

“They didn’t get their viral video event, but they got their documents filed,” Faulk said.

Access to the main floor of the House is always restricted during the session, COVID or not. The House was in the process of shoving bills through the sausage grinder because a deadline was looming, and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins wasn’t available. The affidavits were taken to Legislative Supply Services, where all incoming mail and other documents are screened before being delivered to a legislator.

“They will eventually be delivered to the speaker’s office,” said Jen Waldref, spokeswoman for the House Democratic Caucus.

Whenever the boxes are opened and perused, state officials will basically find about thousands of signed statements with pages of constitutional quotations to support their demands. The language was compiled by Mattes, a marine biologist and recently energized patriot, in part from her research and in part from similar efforts in other states.

One demand is a Cyber Ninjas “forensic audit” of the entire 2020 election. Remember that Cyber Ninjas conducted an audit of the presidential and U.S. Senate race in Arizona’s Maricopa County. After about eight months and $9 million, it found some anomalies but no proof of fraud or a stolen election – and 360 more votes for Joe Biden. After being fined by a judge earlier this year, the company said it was shutting down.

Mattes said the language about Cyber Ninjas may have come from similar efforts in Arizona or Maine when the affidavit was first drafted. The actual company could be up for discussion, but the real point is that some people in the state have doubts about the election.

“I don’t care who won,” she said. “If people in Washington state want to talk about this, we should talk about it”

Although the speaker’s office is still reviewing the affidavits, Jinkins said Friday in an email that the Legislature has no statutory authority to conduct an independent audit of elections, although it could pass legislation that gave it the power.

“But neither former Secretary of State Wyman, a Republican, or current Secretary of State Hobbs, a Democrat, has indicated any need for such a thing,” Jinkins said in the email. “In fact, they’ve both confirmed that our 2020 election was safe, secure and accurate despite attempts to undermine this fact.”

And what Jinkins didn’t say – the Legislature has gone home for the year, so it couldn’t do it before 2023

The other demand, for an end to the mask mandates, may seem to have evaporated on Saturday, as the mask mandates for most indoor settings was lifted. But Mattes said they could be reinstated later despite what she said has “absolutely no science to back it up.” She also questions Inslee’s use of emergency powers for a pandemic, as opposed to an attack or natural disaster.

The attorney general’s office also is still reviewing the Tea Room’s documents, but Brionna Aho, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Bob Ferguson, said the concerns about the 2020 election and COVID health and safety protocols have been raised in previous court challenges. Republican Loren Culp, who lost the governor’s race to Inslee by 13 percentage points, filed a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election, she noted in an email.

“The complaint included sweeping, baseless assertions of voter fraud,” Aho wrote. When Culp’s attorney was informed the state would seek sanctions for an irresponsible lawsuit, it was dropped the next day.

In a court filing, Ferguson’s office noted that Culp and another person claiming to have evidence of fraud refused to produce it. “The claims were made with an improper purpose of undermining confidence in a free and fair election … Mr. Culp lost the election by more than 545,000 votes. Rather than concede gracefully, Mr. Culp has used this lawsuit to distract from the magnitude of his loss and to sow confusion.”

As far as Inslee’s COVID proclamations, 45 lawsuits have been filed challenging the emergency orders issued over nearly two years, and every lawsuit that has been resolved has failed with no relief being granted to any client, Aho noted.

“The courts have been clear: these policies are lawful and constitutional,” Aho wrote.

Mattes makes a point that has been echoed on conservative talk radio and some websites after the group’s “brush-off,” that government officials have an obligation to listen to the people’s concerns and redress their grievances. It is equally true, however, if you want the government to listen and then do something about it, you should know something about how government works. And if you’re bringing up something they’ve already addressed, they’re going to repeat what they said before, so you’d better have a new argument, not one recycled from another state.

Rather than collecting thousands of signatures on photo copied “affidavits” and delivering them six days before the Legislature adjourned, the Tea Room might have spent last fall urging like-minded people to contact their legislators about election security and mask mandates, and been involved in public hearings on those topics throughout the session. It might not have satisfied them, but they would have been better armed when coming to the battle.