[EL] California and “ballot harvesting”

[Rick Hasen]

I don’t agree with this Justin.  I think the “official” designation was likely illegal and part of the problem that’s been flagged with these boxes, but California authorities are still saying that unofficial boxes are illegal even without that designation.

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on behalf of "Levitt, Justin" <justin.levitt at lls.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 7:47 PM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: [EL] California and “ballot harvesting”

This is a profoundly weird article.  The primary objection to the GOP’s program in California was that the images of the boxes prompting further investigation had signs stating that they were “official ballot drop boxes,” and in no way tied to the California GOP.  That was misleading, leading voters to believe that they were official government repositories.

Now, apparently, it seems that the GOP is claiming only a few boxes were so labeled.  If they had been clearly labeled “California Republican boxes” from the get-go, I’m not sure there would have been any meaningful fuss.

You’ve got to get 3/4 of the way through the article to read any of that, and it’s only there in a sentence.  That’s bizarre.  It’s like writing a story on door-to-door fundraising solicitation, and burying the fact that the solicitors showed fake IRS identification at the door.  That seems important in assessing any objection to the practice.
--
Justin Levitt
justin.levitt at lls.edu


On Oct 15, 2020, at 7:06 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

“California Republicans spark national feud over ‘harvesting’ ballot boxes”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=116918>
Posted on October 15, 2020 6:46 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=116918> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico<https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/10/15/california-republicans-spark-national-feud-over-harvesting-ballot-boxes-1325367>:

Behind the brewing legal battle is a nationally reverberating dispute over a 2016 California law authorizing third parties to collect filled-out mail ballots from voters and submit them to elections officials. Republicans here and in Washington have excoriated the process, saying it’s susceptible to fraud and allows liberals to manipulate election outcomes (a House Republican study<https://republicans-cha.house.gov/sites/republicans.cha.house.gov/files/documents/CA%20Ballot%20Harvesting%20Report%20FINAL.pdf> raised security concerns but found no concrete instances of fraud in California).

After California Democrats swept competitive House contests in 2018, some California Republicans conceded that they had no choice but to match their counterparts by embracing the tactic. In leaked audio<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/we-got-our-clocks-cleaned-gop-quietly-works-to-expand-ballot-harvesting-in-california-while-criticizing-democrats-for-the-practice/2019/03/13/a432d902-41b7-11e9-922c-64d6b7840b82_story.html>, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Tom Emmer said Republicans had to adapt after getting “their clocks cleaned.”

This week’s drama shows the party further embracing that change. In doing so, Republicans are trying to paint Democrats as hypocrites wielding a partisan double standard when it comes to election tactics. The party is “going to be ballot harvesting throughout the entire state,” Millan Patterson said.

That stance has echoed to the highest levels of national politics. Trump has constantly assailed California’s voting rules, but this week he repeatedly urged California Republicans to charge ahead, asserting on Twitter that Democrats have “been taking advantage of the system for years!”

California Republicans have acknowledged placing the boxes in three large counties that contain the most contested House races of 2020. And they’re exploring a similar tactic in other states that allow third-party ballot collection, albeit with more constraints than in California.

“Chairman Emmer has said repeatedly that anywhere Democrats have legalized ballot harvesting Republicans will play by the same rules those Democrats put in place,” NRCC spokesperson Torunn Sinclair said in a statement.

California is one of 26 states that allow a voter to designate someone to deliver their ballot, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The state has some the most relaxed laws on third-party collection based on the NCSL database; 12 states, for instance, limit the number of ballots that one person can collect to deter coordinated campaign efforts. California does prohibit payment for ballot collection

Rick Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California, Irvine, cited two potential “overlapping rationales” for California Republicans’ strategy.

“Number one is they’re trying to thread the needle between Trump’s claims of fraud with mail-in ballots and the reality that Republicans in California like elsewhere have long relied on vote by mail,” Hasen said, “and the other possibility is it’s a way of trying to highlight the Democrats’ laws that allow for ballot harvesting and to highlight the insecurity of the practice.”

Hasen said he supports curtailing California’s voter-collection law, such as limiting the number of ballots any given person can pick up and deliver. But he argued Republicans are pursuing a “bone-headed means of getting out the vote” given the potential for people tampering with the boxes.

“It just doesn’t seem like a very smart way to get out the vote,” Hasen said. “It would be far better for them to go door-to-door to Republican households.”
<image001.png><https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D116918&title=%E2%80%9CCalifornia%20Republicans%20spark%20national%20feud%20over%20%E2%80%98harvesting%E2%80%99%20ballot%20boxes%E2%80%9D>
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