Vote harvesting gives party activists, campaign consultants, and other political guns for hire the ability to manipulate election outcomes either through coercion of voters or outright ballot theft and forgery. Yet, in places such as California and the District of Columbia, vote harvesting is perfectly legal.
Vote harvesting occurs when third parties — campaign workers, for example — collect absentee ballots from voters and deliver them to election officials.
Most people had never heard that term until the 2018 elections. In North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, the Republican candidate was accused of illegal vote harvesting and, ultimately, the state election board overturned the election.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, concerns about vote harvesting were raised in California after unexpected losses by Republicans in several congressional races. Concerns were especially acute in Orange County, where the registrar of voters reported that individuals were dropping off hundreds of absentee ballots each.
All states allow an individual to vote with an absentee ballot, often referred to as a mail-in ballot. The completed ballots are usually mailed back to local election officials, although voters can personally deliver their ballots, too.
Nine states also allow a member of the voter’s family to hand-deliver the voted ballot; another 13 states don’t specify whether someone other than the voter can hand-deliver the ballot on the voter’s behalf.
The vote-harvesting issue arises in the District and the 27 states that allow anyone to pick up an absentee ballot from a voter and deliver it to election officials. The contrast between these two approaches can be seen in North Carolina and California.
North Carolina allows “a voter’s near relative or the voter’s verifiable legal guardian” to return an absentee ballot. California had a similar law that allowed a relative or household member to return an absentee ballot. The law was amended in 2016, effective in the 2018 election, and now allows a voter to “designate any person to return the ballot.”
Allowing individuals other than the voter or his immediate family to handle absentee ballots is a recipe for mischief and wrongdoing.
Neither voters nor election officials can verify that the secrecy of the ballot was not compromised, or that the ballot submitted in the voter’s name by a third party accurately reflects the voter’s choices and was not fraudulently changed by the vote harvester. And there is no guarantee that vote harvesters won’t simply discard the ballots of voters whose political preferences for candidates of the opposition party are known.
It also gives campaign and political party intermediaries the ability to influence voters while they are casting a ballot out of election officials’ sight and without any supervision by them.
Thus, there is no one present to ensure that voters are not being coerced, intimidated, threatened, or paid for their vote.
The Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database contains cases illustrating this problem. They include the conviction in 2017 of the former mayor of Eatonville, Florida, for coercing absentee voters to cast ballots for him — ballots that won him the election.
Then there is the former mayor of Martin, Kentucky, who (along with her husband and son) was convicted in 2014 for threatening and intimidating poor and disabled citizens into casting absentee ballots for her, including ballots that the mayor had filled out.
Obviously, there needs to be a way for individuals who cannot vote in person on Election Day due to illness or some other valid reason to cast a vote, and absentee ballots are the easiest way to make that possible. But the rules governing absentee ballots should not make them susceptible to theft, forgery, or coercion.
That is exactly what states are doing when they allow vote harvesting. Giving third parties who have a stake in the outcome of an election unsupervised access to voters and their absentee ballots is not wise.
Indeed, it is a proven threat to the integrity of our elections.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66426?mailing_id=4620&utm_medium...
Former Vice President and 2020 Democrat presidential primary candidate Joe Biden is vowing to give Obamacare, funded by American taxpayers, to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States.
During an interview with Telemundo’s Jose Diaz-Balart, Biden forgot that Obamacare technically bans illegal aliens from enrolling in healthcare plans — although illegal aliens are still able to obtain subsidized and free healthcare at Americans’ expense — and promised that under his plan, all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens would be able to get Obamacare.
The exchange went as follows:
DIAZ-BALART: When I … NBC moderated that first debate with you, I didn’t … I don’t recall a clear answer, under your plan should … would the 11, 12 million undocumented immigrants that live in the United States, that have been here many for generations, would they have access …
BIDEN: Yes.
DIAZ-BALART: — to health insurance.
BIDEN: Yes, they … if they can buy into the system like everybody else.
DIAZ-BALART: Because you know, in [Obamacare] they can’t.
BIDEN: Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well they can, that’s my point. They continue to be able to do that.
DIAN-BALART: They cannot under the ObamaCare.
BIDEN: Well and that’s my point, they will though. They will be able to buy into … [illegal aliens] would be able to buy in, just like anyone else could.
Biden joins Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — among other 2020 Democrats — in committing to forcing American taxpayers to pay for healthcare for illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S.
Already, due to loopholes, American taxpayers are spending nearly $20 billion every year to provide illegal aliens with subsidized healthcare, emergency room visits, and other health services.
Under the 2020 Democrats’ plan to provide taxpayer-funded healthcare to all illegal aliens living in the U.S., Americans would be billed potentially $660 billion every decade just to cover the costs. Other research has found that the plan would cost Americans at least $23 billion every year.
As Breitbart News has reported, experts have said that giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to effectively all foreign nationals who can make it to America’s borders would drive “strong incentives for people with serious health problems to enter the country or remain longer than their visas allow in order to get government-funded care.”
Despite 2020 Democrats’ continued push for taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens, American voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the plan. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey revealed that the healthcare-for-illegal-aliens plan is the least popular policy position, with opposition from 62 percent of U.S. voters.
Similarly, a CNN poll from July discovered that 63 percent of likely swing voters oppose providing healthcare to illegal aliens, along with nearly 6-in-10 of all likely U.S. voters and 61 percent of moderates. A Rasmussen Reports survey also found that likely voters, by a majority of 55 percent, oppose giving healthcare to even the most low-income illegal aliens.
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