Washington gubernatorial candidate losing by half a million votes won’t concede

Despite being down by over half a million votes, a Washington gubernatorial candidate is refusing to concede while insisting voter fraud is the reason for his loss.

Loren Culp is the Republican challenger running against incumbent Gov. Jay Inslee, who is projected to win a third term, according to The Washington Post. With 96% of votes counted as of Nov. 10, Inslee is leading Culp by 13 percentage points - 57% to 43%, the Post reported.

“No, I’m not conceding,” Culp told viewers of his Facebook livestream on Nov. 9. “I’m not a quitter, don’t give in, don’t back down, love a good challenge.”

Culp also did a livestream the previous week explaining that he was not conceding and had lost his job as Republic police chief.

“I made some comments last week about some hinky things going on with the vote and the results,” Culp said in his latest livestream.

Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said she was not aware of “any voting irregularities,” according to KING.

“I’m not sure what he’s referencing,” Wyman told KING of Culp. “Remember, it’s not the candidates that get to determine the outcomes, it’s the voters.”

Culp said he wants “every single legal vote to count.” He went on to explain that his “team got to work and...went through the voter files.”

“Unlike crooked, lying Jay Inslee and a lot of people in the media, I want every vote to count,” he said. “You don’t concede until all of those votes are counted…Just after reviewing a small sample of the voter files...from one county...we found 2,500 errors in the voter files. Addresses that don’t exist, things like that.”

Culp said his team also found 3,000 voters who are registered in two states within that one county.

“It is not a crime to be registered” to vote in multiple states, WUSA reported. People sometimes move without informing their previous state that they have done so, but states do, however, “clean their rolls” and the voter will be removed from the state’s database, according to WUSA.

When it comes to voting twice in the same state, generally officials will keep records of who has voted and the first ballot returned by a voter “precludes them from voting again,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Voter fraud is exceptionally rare, including in Washington, according to The New York Times.

“In Washington, a state that is predominantly a mail voting state and sends ballots to all registered voters, the Republican secretary of state found 142 cases of suspected improper voting in the 2018 election,” the Times reported.

That’s “.004% of the more than 3.1 million” votes cast in that election, according to the newspaper.Wyman attributes this to “safeguards built into the state’s (election) system,” the newspaper reported.

“This isn’t over until it’s over. This isn’t the end of it, I will always fight for you guys,” Culp said in this week’s Facebook livestream.

Inslee has “dismissed any allegations of voter fraud,” according to KIRO.

This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 2:52 PM.