Teachable Moment

the Teachable Moment

How can ballot harvesting lead to voting fraud?

Ballot harvesting is the practice of allowing people to collect voters’ ballots and turn in bundles of them to polling stations. Voting fraud that has actually occurred with ballot harvesting includes: (1) ANY individuals, including nonresidents, foreign nationals and illegal immigrants, were allowed to harvest an unlimited number of ballots with absolutely no requirements to prove they were legal; (2) vote-by-mail ballots collected by ballot harvesters did NOT have to include the name or signature of the harvester on the identification envelope in order to be valid; (3) ballot harvesters were NOT required to document the voteby- mail ballots’ chain of custody (proof they were unchanged) in any way; (4) ballot harvesters were NOT required to disclose to a voter who they were working for or if they were being paid to collect ballots; (5) ballot harvesters were NOT required to provide any kind of proof of legitimacy when collecting vote-by-mail ballots; (6) election officials were NOT required to obtain any ID, including names, of ballot harvesters when they returned collected ballots; (6) election officials were NOT required to maintain a list of persons who collected ballots, no matter how many ballots they submitted; (7) ballot harvesters went directly to the homes of voters, collected the ballots, changed, tampered with, or discarded ballots not marked for their candidate.

All of this is against the law and jeopardizes the security of our voting system. The surest way for voters to guarantee their ballot is counted correctly is to go to the polls on one of the days designated for the election. Citizens can make arrangements to vote just as they make arrangements to buy groceries or see a doctor.