Michael Cathcart has joined us now.

And you're running for Spokane County auditor.

Thank you for being with us.

Absolutely.

Give us a minute, about yourself and why you want to run for this position.

Yeah.

So, again, Mike Cathcart, I've been serving on the Spokane City Council for about the last seven years.

Married, my wife and I have two kids, very young ones, five and a half the others.

Just about to turn one this week, in fact.

So really excited about that.

You know, I really see this position as, an opportunity to really focus in on some of the things that have been my greatest priorities on the City Council, namely transparency.

And to me, the more government is transparent, the more you can trust it and the more that we can trust our government.

I just think the stronger of a community that we have.

And so that's really what's driven me quite a bit to consider this.

And when, Vicki had mentioned that she was going to retire this year.

I really started to look very closely at the, the position, and it just seemed like it would be a very good, natural fit for, for me and my background.

It elections, election process.

It remains a very crucial and, talked about topic amongst voters across the country.

Really?

What are your priorities?

If and when you, you get elected to this position?

Well, first and foremost, it's confidence building.

I want every single eligible voter to know that when they cast their ballot, it is going to be handled securely and it's going to be, counted accurately.

And to me that we can really demonstrate how we are doing that by, I think, opening up elections more than we ever have, really showing the public how the process works from A to Z. You know, when I came into the city council, none of our, committee study sessions, any of those meetings were streamed.

By a combination of advocacy, on my part and some of the Covid mandates, making some shifts, a requirement.

We were able to start filming all of those committees.

By comparison, the canvasing board, which is the terminating committee of, a lot of the election outcomes is not streamed.

It's not really accessible.

So I want to do that.

I want to stream the logic and accuracy testing, which is the machine testing, to verify that the machine is accurate at the beginning of the election, as well as stream the post-election audits that we're conducting at the end to verify that ballots were, in fact, counted accurately.

So I think some of those things we can do.

There's some other reforms that I believe we can look at, that the state has authorized with verification of ballots.

I believe we can expand our, post-election audits in an objective way and really just help people feel comfortable that regardless of what their party is, their their perspective, that their vote is going to count and elections are going to be accurately tabulated.

Is there one election security issue that really stands out to you that could come into play in Spokane County?

And if so, how are you going to address it?

I think you've said a couple of them there with the streaming media, but is there one in particular?

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a number of improvements that, I think we can make in the sense of just building that confidence, opening it up to the community.

So in terms of a security issue, one that I would probably point out just because of the relevance and timing would be the security of the drop boxes themselves.

So you think back to the fires, we had one, drop box that was in harm's way.

Thankfully nothing happened.

But there were multiple days that went by before that drop box could be emptied of the ballots that were in it.

So we need to have, I think, a strong plan that coordinates with our first responders, because we've had examples in Vancouver where a, a ballot drop box was lit on fire and there really was no plan as to how you would try to preserve the ballots but also preserve the privacy of the voters.

Ballots start getting destroyed, burns.

Suddenly things might be visible that weren't before, and somebody's privacy that their private vote could be observed.

So we need to have a plan in place for first responders to preserve ballots, make sure that we've got a direct line of communication to the voters so that they know, hey, I put my ballot in this drop in this drop box.

And, they need to know that maybe something occurred.

And so they've going to have to cure that ballot.

So I think that that's one that we can really work on.

We can look at and audit all of the locations, making sure that there are cameras, making sure there's good lighting, all those things that are a deterrent to something negative, perhaps occurring.

And then the Secretary of State's office has security grants that we can go after to help pay for improvements that we may need to make, just to shore those up.

So that's that's a big security issue.

But I would also just say more broadly that it's just the perception that there might be something wrong.

That also creates a pretty big issue.

And that's really what I want to address, with a number of tools and objective measures that are already allowed and the state has already put in place, you kind of call yourself, an independent watchdog.

You were on city council for seven years in calling yourself an independent watchdog.

What you're saying is I'm running as a Republican, but I'm really looking at the big picture here, and I will step in where I need to.

If you can give us one example of maybe where you did that, stepped out of kind of the norm, as a, as a city council member and really put on that hat of independent watchdog.

Give us an example of that.

Yeah.

Well, just an example from the city council.

So, 22 or 23, there was a big effort that I made to pass a, transparency ordinance around our budgeting process.

I was pretty frustrated with a lot of siloed decision making and a lack of, specificity around some of the budget changes that we would make throughout the year outside of our normal budget process.

And so, working with our budget director at the time, we put together an ordinance that really addressed those transparency issues, required that we put some dollars, every year into our reserves and really started to improve.

I think our overall, budgeting situation, not just for council members, but for the public as well.

And that, ordinance was vetoed by Mayor Woodward.

And so working with my, my colleagues because just transparency to me is number one.

And so working with my colleagues, we overrode that veto to make sure that that got passed.

And so, I'm never afraid to make a decision or push back or do something, that maybe some in my party or some, who are, you know, right of center would disagree with if it's the right decision to make.

And the same is true on the opposite way as well.

This is a job that's really about following the law, upholding the law.

Parties are largely, in my mind, should be irrelevant to how the auditor runs the office.

These are decisions that are made for the good of the entire electorate, the customers that we serve, the voters, the citizens that we serve in the office.

And they're really party or demographics or anything else should not come into play in terms of how we serve the community.

Every eligible voter should be able to get a ballot and cast their vote, their ballot, and have it be counted.

They should be able to see their tax dollars and where they're being spent and what they're getting for it.

And they should have great customer service when they come to the window looking to whatever it might be, get a marriage license or, record a document or, obtain their registration for their vehicle.

I think we have to make sure that we are providing that really strong, positive customer service to everybody who comes through the doors.

Gave a little bit, I think, in this last answer.

But you know, what you did do and did as a city council member is very different.

And then than being the county auditor, how does that job though translate?

I mean, you have different role responsibilities.

It is vastly differently.

So how is your experience now going to translate?

Yeah.

So the role of the county auditor is really a leadership and management position.

And I think throughout my career as well as on council, there has been just a number of, opportunities for me to, to lead, to manage to oversee, you know, really complex problems.

We've had a number of very complex municipal budgets that I've worked through.

Financing is part of some of the regional committees that I'm a part of.

I currently chair the regional health district, the Northeast Public Development Authority, and then I'm past chair now of the growth management steering committee.

And all of that is really put me at the table for major economic development decisions and public health decisions, but also budgetary, finance and personnel and some really challenging personnel decisions, in fact, that have had to be made, over the last few years.

And so I think that, again, between that council experience, the breadth of my career prior running, nonprofit organization, previously, working in the state legislature, a number of these different elements have all really come together, I think, to put me in the strongest position to lead this office.

And again, it really does, I think, emphasize or what I want to emphasize in this office is, connected directly to a lot of the work that I've been doing on the city council, transparency, accountability, accessibility, language access, things like that.

Very important for the community.

And very grateful, frankly, to have a very strong bipartisan coalition of support, that includes, you know, the council president, Betsy Wilkerson, who I served with and disagree very often with, but recognizes that, you know, I'm the best candidate for this job, as well as our current sitting county auditor, Vicki Dalton.

And a number of Republican leaders, finance leaders, community leaders, etc.. It's it's humbling to have so much support from across the political spectrum.

You brought up Vicki, in that position, I believe, for 30 plus years.

What would you do differently from her?

She has done, by most people's account, a pretty darn good job at that position.

What would you do differently?

Yeah, I think, Vicki's run the office.

Well, I think part of it is really just a next phase in modernizing the office.

It's going to be a real big emphasis on transparency first.

And that doesn't suggest that we haven't had a transparent office in the past, but I think that there's more that we can do, even under existing laws to expand that transparency for folks.

So a couple of things that I'm very interested in, I want to form a bipartisan advisory committee to help give us some input on how to improve observation in the office for the public, because, again, when the public can see what's happening, I think that there's a better, confidence and outcome that can be derived from that.

I also am very interested on the finance side, for to develop a platform, which is something I've introduced at the city.

It's called the timely notice ordinance that I had introduced.

And the concept here is establishing a platform where you can go in, see exactly where your money's been spent, your tax dollars, where it was authorized or what, what the resolution was or the ordinance that authorized the spending.

And then what exactly we got for those dollars being spent.

And right now, you it's really challenging.

You have to go through a lot of different documents and reports to, to try to suss out some of that, that information.

And so I want to compile it all, put it in a really easy, one stop shop place online that folks can access it and have it be as close to real time as as we can possibly do.

So I think that there is just sort of next steps, next levels of transparency and improvements, that I am really excited to bring.

And, and I do really emphasize the confidence building in elections.

And so somebody brings a concern to me about fraud or anything else.

We are going to investigate it and we are going to make sure that we are, you know, working by facts and data and, making really good decisions so that the public knows that there are elections and the office overall is secure and really working for them.

Throughout your campaign, you have been going door to door all over the county.

We talked about how big this county is before we got started here.

Let us tell us a little bit about what you're hearing from voters.

What are their main concerns?

What are they telling you specifically?

You know, they're on on this office in particular, there seems to be a real, I guess, significant, worldview of voters across the political spectrum, obviously coming at it from different angles.

But everybody wants to know that their ballots are secure, their votes are going to count, and they're very concerned about, interference from parties and politicians and, all of those sorts of, of things that can come in to create pressure and try to drive a different decision.

So I hear that a lot from folks.

And when I talk to you, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, and I just talk about following the law and how we're going to open things up and really try to build that confidence, that tends to have a very positive reaction from a lot of folks.

I'm very encouraged by that.

And I think that we can make folks feel really comfortable regardless of their party, their backgrounds, their perspectives.

The secondary thing I would just point out, because it's a little humorous, is a lot of times folks don't really realize who or what the auditor does.

They assume it's the assessor.

And so often I'm hearing about taxes, and it's not because of my role on the city council, but more so because folks are seeing their assessments increases and increasing, and they're worried about their tax rates going up and things like that.

So often that is brought up to me as a big concern that folks have, particularly those who are seniors and older in our community.

Do you feel like even that information you're getting that isn't in your wheelhouse is helpful?

Oh, it's always helpful.

And oftentimes I can help connect them up to the actual assessor's office or get them the information that they want.

So it's it's always beneficial when I can communicate with somebody and they've got even if it's just a, misunderstanding of the, of the role, I'm able to correct them and, and get them, some assistance oftentimes.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Michael Cathcart, the Republican candidate for Spokane County auditor.

Thanks for joining us.

Yeah.

Thank you for having me.