Pend Oreille auditor race pits incumbent against election skeptic

After running unopposed for the last three elections, Pend Oreille County Auditor Marianne Nichols is facing a challenge this year from an election skeptic.

Tamara Newman, a precinct committee officer and committeewoman for the state Republicans, said she decided to run against the 16-year incumbent to get answers to questions she says Nichols hasn’t answered.

“I don’t want to run against her,” Newman said. “But I guess if I have to run to get answers to my questions, I’ll run.”

Newman faces an uphill battle, though. She took 25% of the primary election votes, while Nichols had 72%.

Yet in the heavily conservative county, Newman has the backing of the county Republican party, which endorsed her after the primary.

On the other hand, Nichols has been endorsed by the elected county officials, all of whom are Republicans. She is also endorsed by Republican and former secretary of state Sam Reed.

As an election observer for the last three years, Newman said she has not seen evidence of voter fraud in Pend Oreille County, but “the potential is there.”

Specifically, she said, the ballot tabulators can connect to the internet and could therefore be hacked.

This is completely false, Nichols said. “The only way the tabulators could be manipulated is if someone is actually in the office in front of them,” she said.

She takes election integrity and building security very seriously, she said. Her office found one ballot from a deceased person in the 2020 election, which she reported to the sheriff and FBI, but that was the only instance.

“2020 was a while ago and people are still denying that election,” Nichols said, “but we have yet to have anybody bring forth any information at all to show that there were any issues.”

Besides elections, Newman questions the office’s audit history. In her ad campaign, Newman claims that the auditor’s office has “failed” seven audits, even though Nichols points out that those audits were of the county, not her office, and that audits are not pass/fail.

Newman points to audits of federal highway grants from the last three years that had the same finding: A procurement policy needed a conflict of interest statement. The problem, she said, is not that there was a finding, but that it wasn’t fixed.

Those grants were not the responsibility of the auditor’s office, however. A committee of county officials was formed to address the finding, but due to staff changes and technicalities, it was not fixed in time, Nichols said.

The auditor’s office works as a liaison between county departments and the state auditor. Nichols has had successful financial and accountability audits – the audits she is in charge of preparing – every year for the last 16 years, she said.