There is another new term in our lexicon – “ballot harvesting.” It has begun to spread across the country and there could not be anything that is more destructive to protecting the sanctity of our democracy than this idea. Just look at North Carolina and California.
Ballot harvesting is the process where organized workers or volunteers--people you don't know--collect absentee ballots from voters and drop them off at a polling place or election office. Nothing can go wrong there; right?
Some are so hungry to have voters participate in the process that they are willing to lower the bar for how ballots end up at the election office. They are so anxious to do this that they will sanctify any hare-brained scheme to raise the voter count. They forget we live in a free country where it is the right of everyone who meets the requirements to vote or not to vote. Not voting is a statement and a right of every citizen.
Many think they are just not knowledgeable enough to vote. Many of the positions on a ballot -- like some of the propositions or who should be county assessor or judgeships – cause many people angst if they have no clue which way to go.
Then you must think why are people trying to make it so effortless to vote. You don’t have to think about the act of registering. The ballot gets mailed directly to you. Someone comes to your door and picks it up. Never having to prove you are actually a person eligible to vote. One might think that someone should have to put a little effort into wanting to vote. Learning about the issues. Eager to receive their ballot so they can participate in the election process. No some want to dumb this down to the lowest common denominator and toward what end?
It makes sense that the same people who encourage ballot harvesting are against voter ID laws or having county registrars clean the voter rolls. It is not a farfetched idea to think they have ulterior motives other than getting a higher voter turnout. If they do not have an ulterior motive when they are ballot harvesting, why are they only doing that at homes they believe support their partisan interests instead of all homes to enhance the overall voter turnout? This is for purely partisan political interests; thus, it is obvious to common-sense minds that there will be fraud involved. Someone will take the process to the limit and then exceed the limit.
That could be what happened in North Carolina. A political operative who had worked for both parties was engaged by an inexperienced Republican candidate who won election to Congress in a close race where the number of ballots in question could have changed the outcome. In North Carolina ballot harvesting is illegal, but it appears that some Democrat ballots were picked up by door-knockers. The ballots are supposed to be handled by the voter only, or a close relative in case someone is physically limited.
That happened where ballot harvesting is illegal. Some states like California legalized anyone delivering a ballot. Both parties participated in the practice in California. Matt Fleming, spokesperson for the California GOP, told me “We were well aware of the process and did it ourselves.”
The difference here is that the Democrats had vast sums of money to ballot harvest and did so in key races. Dale Neugebauer, former chief of staff for Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), stated:
“I have a little bit of professional admiration for how well the Democrats executed their plan.” That can happen when billionaires pour millions of last-minute dollars into a district as both Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg did. But just because it is legal and no charges were made in California doesn’t eliminate the opportunity for fraud as part of the process.
Orange County, California -- which was a Republican stronghold for a long time -- had 250,000 harvested ballots turned in on election day. The Republicans have no infrastructure to pursue testing as to how or whether this process was manipulated or fraud was part of the process.
Think of how dubious this process is by its very nature. You have someone show up to your house. They state they are there to collect your mail-in ballot for you. And you just hand over your ballot to a stranger who comes to your door. Government officials warn you about strangers coming to your door and trying to sell you anything from magazines to solar panels, but they legalize someone coming to your door with potentially ginned-up credentials to take your sacred ballot to the election officials.
The same people who have been decrying how Russians attempted to manipulate our election process for three years now are perfectly willing to let strangers pick up ballots from your house and you are supposed to trust that this process will work out just fine. We have strangers who have been doing that for us for a long time. They are called postal workers and they have done quite a fine job. They take ballots that are placed in a secure box – a USPS mail box – and no one questions what political party you are from. Why are we allowing partisan hacks unsupervised to invade our election process just because they are not Russians?
Currently 16 states address the issue of ballot harvesting with many outlawing it. You can bet your house that Democrats are going to attempt to pass this process in every state where they control the legislature and/or governorship. They see what they were able to do in California with ballot harvesting in place and buckets of money to take advantage of the law. They will attempt to permanently lock out Republicans by this process arguing it is making voting more accessible.
What it really is doing is opening up our election system to greater and greater levels of fraud. They will not investigate whether there were irregularities and then tell anyone talking about voter fraud they are just being silly.
They are not.