if/else on digitalRead not executing on 'else' portion
(Heh... before even seeing the code I guessed you'd done this...)

You are comparing a pin number, not the results of digitalRead(), and then passing the results of that comparison to digitalRead():

if (digitalRead(LED_BUILTIN == LOW)) 


It should read:

if (digitalRead(LED_BUILTIN) == LOW) 


Note the order of the brackets:  LED_BUILTIN is passed to digitalRead(), and then the result of calling that function is compared to the value LOW.