GOP aims to ‘harvest’ ballots as well in 2020
Column: GOP aims to ‘harvest’ ballots as well in 2020
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...964-snap-photo[COLOR=var(--primaryTextColor)]The San Diego County Registrar of Voters office, pictured last October. Each election, officials encourage people to vote early there in person, or drop off mail ballots.
(John Gibbins / The Union-Tribune )
Democrats took advantage of new law allowing more people, organized groups to collect and deliver mail ballots in 2018
By MICHAEL SMOLENS COLUMNIST
OCT. 30, 2019 5 AM
If you can’t beat them, join them.
Democrats last year took advantage of a new California law that greatly expanded the universe of who can pick up mail ballots from voters and deliver them to election officials. Republicans did not and they paid for it.
GOP leaders raised suspicions about so-called “ballot harvesting,” even suggesting with no evidence that it may have been conducted fraudulently. But some Republican strategists expressed grudging admiration that the Democrats got the drop on them and are promising it won’t happen again.
Even as they continue to criticize how Democrats used the tactic, Republicans are mapping out their own ballot-harvesting plans for next year’s election.
Republican Carl DeMaio said he intends to launch a ballot-collecting operation for his March primary campaign in the 50th Congressional District, where he and others are taking on GOP incumbent Duncan Hunter.
There were some sporadic GOP ballot collections in 2018, but they were weak in comparison to what the Democrats were doing. Jessica Millan Patterson, who took over the reins of the California Republican Party this year, said the party was asleep at the switch.
“We certainly need to do better. … We’re getting beat at (ballot harvesting), so the argument that we did it well, I mean, we just can’t make that argument,” Patterson said shortly after she was elected party chairwoman in February, according to RealClear Politics.
The term “ballot harvesting” had become something of a pejorative, given the controversy surrounding it — largely generated by the GOP.
But Republicans are increasingly using the term.
DeMaio, a former San Diego City Council member and radio host, recently urged supporters in an email to contribute to his “Republican Ballot Harvesting Program.”
The law that enables ballot harvesting didn’t attract a lot of attention when it was approved.
In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, that allows anybody to collect mail ballots from voters, who still must fill out the ballots, seal them in the official envelopes provided and sign the envelopes. The third parties can drop them off at the Registrar of Voters office, authorized remote ballot boxes or a polling place.
Before the law was changed, only close family members or someone in the voter’s household could perform the task.
That opened the door for campaigns and politically active groups — such as unions on the Democratic side — to collect ballots. DeMaio said he’s enlisting college students to go door-to-door to contact voters who will be receiving mail ballots, and return to collect them. People can be paid to do it, but not on a per ballot basis in an effort to remove an incentive to fraudulently fill out ballots or pressure voters to hand over their ballots. Critics say the safeguards aren’t enough.
As the bill moved through the Legislature, Gonzalez said it was intended to remove “yet another obstacle for individuals attempting to vote.”
The change helped boost Democratic fortunes in California, where the party flipped seven Republican congressional districts that were key to taking over the House majority. In many of those districts, however, the GOP had comparatively low voter turnout — something Republicans hope to change with President Donald Trump on the ballot next year. Clearly, the GOP wants an improved turnout operation, one that apparently will include ballot harvesting. Some Republicans believe winning back a handful of California districts is crucial to regaining control of the House.
To increase ballot-collection efforts, some Republicans say they must overcome what they believe is a natural wariness among GOP voters to entrust their ballots to a third party.
Former Rep. Mimi Walters, an Orange County Republican, told The Washington Post that was an issue in her campaign’s ballot-harvesting program last year, despite a voter-education effort and providing collectors with “ballot security” identification badges.
“The Republicans that leaned our way didn’t trust that their ballots were actually going to get to the registrar,” she said.
Walters led Democrat Katie Porter by 6,000 votes on election night, but wound up losing by more than 12,000 when all the votes were counted weeks later.
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was flummoxed and suspicious of the California results.
“Their system is bizarre,” he said. “I still don’t completely understand it. There are a lot of races there we should have won.”
California election officials said there were no credible reports of ballot harvesting being conducted illegally. Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, suggested it was not only a case of sour grapes, but that Republicans were seeking “to delegitimize the results of these elections as opposed to taking ownership for having bad policies and bad candidates.”
He said the changing election process, including increased use of mail-in ballots in general, is designed to boost participation, but requires more time to fully and accurately tally the votes.
From the outset, skeptics of the law expressed concern that it could lead to collectors fraudulently filling out ballots or signing them. Investigators said they uncovered some of that — not in California, but North Carolina, where a Republican consultant was charged with several counts related to election fraud in a harvesting operation during a congressional election. Those particular accusations aside, North Carolina does not allow the broad, California-style ballot harvesting.
The election was overturned, and a Republican again prevailed in a make-up contest.
Steve Peace, a former San Diego state legislator, has a grim view of new, legalized ballot collections.
“It’s naive to believe ballot harvesting won’t result in massive fraud,” said Peace, a founder of the Independent Voter Project, which promotes nonpartisan elections and authored California’s current primary system where the top two vote-getters advance to November regardless of party affiliation.
DeMaio said he doesn’t like it, either, and is suspicious of how Democrats deployed ballot harvesting last year. But he stressed Republicans must fight fire with fire, and added a shot at GOP leadership while doing so.
“They were way ahead of the curve,” DeMaio said of Democrats. ". . . Republicans were running 1980s campaigns.”
Democrats are seeking to expand ballot harvesting around the country while Republicans say they want to stop it.
Meanwhile, in California at least, Republicans aim to see if they can beat Democrats at their own game.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...ng-2018-losses
